


The Night of the Silent Hall

by dith



Category: Wild Wild West (TV)
Genre: M/M, Multi, Some non-con but light on the angst, a little romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-14
Updated: 2019-05-14
Packaged: 2020-03-04 20:32:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 31,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18820183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dith/pseuds/dith
Summary: His expression never changed, but suddenly Artie could smell, as clearly as if it were the sound of horses’ hooves riding toward him then riding away, a wafting floral scent that smelled heavy and sweet on the cool night air. It grew closer, and Artie drew in a big breath, almost as though he were going to sneeze, as a cover for taking in all of the scent that he could. It was tuberose, fat and heady, a nearly pure Mexican oil if Artie was any judge. It was a sort of thick luxurious scent of hot-climate flowers, with the faintest tinge of menthol lurking in the background.There was a woman passing by him in the night.Using all his best moves pretending to be a lolling drunk, Artie made a very thorough examination of the environment around him. He could see nothing, and hear nothing. But the scent of the tuberose told its own tale.If she was moving in the direction of the gambling hall, Artie figured, she was probably out to get involved in some trouble.





	The Night of the Silent Hall

**Author's Note:**

> So yes, I usually post Marvel fic here, but now! What's important is to get distracted from everything else and write a 30,000 word fic in a fandom that's been mostly dead for forty years! Yes!
> 
> I loved _Wild Wild West_ as a child, and even as a child I pretty much felt like I didn't know much, but I thought those two fellers on the screen were probably in love. Forty years later, here's a fanfic I've probably been wanting to write all this time.
> 
> Hell's bells, I may even write more.
> 
> Enjoy

“There’s the mayor,” Artie said without moving his lips as he walked past Jim on his way to the bar.

He could always count on Artie. Jim hadn’t known which of the stovepipe-hatted gentlemen to keep an eye on. The mayor, as they’d agreed before they arrived in town, was the likeliest suspect: someone with authority but not known for dispensing violence.

The mayor was short but broad, and looking at the man’s barrel chest and square, muscular shoulders, Jim reconsidered. This man looked fully capable of dispensing violence. They’d thought they were looking for a gang of men, or at least partners. Now he wondered if the mayor was wreaking all the havoc by himself.

Jim swung casually to his right, set his whisky down with deliberate gentleness on the corner of the bar as he surveyed the room. If his back was to the wall, no one would be surprised. Jim knew how strangers saw him. He looked like what he was: dangerous.

He watched as the mayor joined a group of men clustered around a table in the saloon and began playing what appeared to be friendly poker. Business types, with their fine jackets tossed over the backs of their chairs in a way that meant to suggest a casual disregard for them but in fact kept the fine fabrics off the floor. Men with suspenders showing and fine waistcoats.

Jim took another sip of his whisky before casually looking around. If those gentlemen measured their worth by the splendor of their waistcoats, Jim in his spectacular royal blue brocade must just be ruining their day.

He didn’t watch Artie but he knew exactly what his partner was doing. He didn’t know how he knew, he just knew. This was the time Artie would be cozying up to the bartender, gripping a glass of beer as if it were his final meal, making himself appealing and interesting and faintly amusing to the rest of the room so that his prey would come to him. 

Yep, there went the mayor, strolling nonchalantly toward the bar looking as if he meant to find out what Artie was all about.

Good luck with that, thought Jim as he straightened up from his whiskey and backed toward the door hidden behind the crook of the wall.

He heard Artie start singing a very slightly off-color song and knew when all the attention in the room had turned to the drunk out-of-towner at the bar. The knob gave at his turn of it; Jim slipped in.

He’d hoped the doorway would lead to a passageway that would open out, perhaps to a larger headquarters. 

But it didn’t. It stayed narrow as it turned the corner, just barely wide enough for his shoulders, the faintest of light working its way into the building from a skylight far above.

In the near-dark Jim took two more steps.

He heard the swoosh before he felt it, even smelled the breath of the massive dog as his teeth closed together, _snap_ , inches in front of his face.

All right then.

Feeling his way back the way he had come, Jim noted the doorknob poking him in the back even as he expected the dog’s teeth to close into his flesh at any second.

No teeth came and he couldn’t even hear the breathing of the animal as he slowly turned the knob and slid out.

He heard Artie add a particularly colorful description of an attractive part of a woman’s body as he came out the door, knew Artie had done it so that, again, everyone would look at him and laugh, covering Jim's exit.

You couldn’t ask for a better partner than Artemus Gordon.

###

“That was surprisingly uninformative,” said Artie later, who had ditched his disguise as a drunk out-of-towner and adopted a persona as a Swedish waiter to work his way up to Jim's hotel room. 

“It was a surprisingly large dog,” Jim said laconically, watching out the window to the street.

“How are we going to find out where the mayor is hiding his stolen money if we can’t get back into his little hidey hole?” 

Jim turned around, faintly amused as he so often was by the incongruous sight of Artie with bushy white hair and a beard, with his feet up on Jim's bed and his arms crossed over his chest, forehead furrowed in thought.

“I’m going to follow him in,” Jim said with the matter-of-fact tone he always used for plans he knew Artie wasn’t going to like.

Artie didn’t like it. He never said so, because that wasn’t his style. Instead he said, “What if those gunmen who helped him in the last robbery are just waiting inside, hoping to bag themselves a government agent?”

“I don’t think they will be.” Jim returned to looking out the window. He hadn’t been followed here, as far as he knew, and neither had Artie, but he’d learned the hard way to keep watch anyway. No one helpful ever snuck up on them when they weren’t looking. Well, very few helpful people.

Jim went on. “Artemus, you’ll doubtless recall that the witnesses described the gunmen as huge in the first robbery, ‘practically blocking out the sun’. The witnesses in the second said the gunmen had ‘guns bigger than they were’. And at the third, ‘one fat man and one Indian man but neither one of them said a word’.”

“You think he’s getting new partners every time?”

“I don’t think they’re partners. They might be victims themselves. None of the witnesses ever reported any of them saying anything. Don’t bank robbers usually at least throw out a few threats? Does it strike you as odd that they were reported as _completely_ silent?”

Artie thrust out his chin, a gesture he often made while thinking. “Like a peculiarly silent guard dog?”

Jim gave Artie a meaningful look. He never had to spend a lot of time discussing things with Artie, though discussing things with Artie was one of his favorite pastimes. He enjoyed that Artie usually did most of the discussing.

Artie was climbing off his bed, shaking himself back down into the persona of a dumpy Swedish waiter. “Okay, fella, you go ahead then, you watch yer back, I tell ya.”

Jim just nodded, watching Artie go.

###

Artie lounged in the doorway in the rear of the town’s only hotel, clutching a ceramic jug that could easily have been filled with moonshine but was in fact filled with water.

No one had come and gone in the last twenty minutes, and Artie was beginning to feel this town didn’t have much nightlife to speak of.

Still, he wanted to keep an eye on the alleyway that led back to the gambling saloon across the street. He knew Jim would be investigating whatever the mayor had stored back there, somewhere in the twisty maze of tiny corridors that shouldn’t even fit in the rear of a building that size, much less be guarded by a silent killer dog.

Artemus was surprised that Jim hadn’t come up with a way to subdue the dog. Animals were a strength of Jim's. It must really have been too dark to see. More surprising that there had been nothing to hear. Hopefully Jim would be forewarned and forearmed if he decided to take that route again. 

Truly, Artie hoped that Jim hadn’t gone back the same route. He didn’t worry about his partner when he was out of sight, not exactly. It wasn’t worry. Worry wouldn’t become a member of the United States Secret Service. And Jim West wouldn’t appreciate anyone worrying about him.

No, Artie didn’t worry. He got a little concerned sometimes, though, the kind of concern that kept him out in the street late at night making sure that no henchmen, willing or unwilling, were, say, carrying a carpet out the back of the saloon with one Jim West rolled up in it. Or smuggling him away in a carriage, or nailing him into a coffin and dropping him in a lake, or... Frankly, Artie couldn’t have come up with half the ways to kill West that their enemies had come up with over the years.

And _that_ was good enough reason to keep watch on the alleyway.

Thinking about Jim just made Artemus want to shake his head more. The younger man seemed to take a perverse pleasure in competition for competition’s sake. There was more than enough danger to go around, yet Jim always seemed not just willing, but delighted, to take on more than his share of it when the guns and the fighting started.

Artie knew Jim valued his partnership, yet he couldn’t resist making jokes at Artie’s expense. He couldn’t seem to stop himself from competing for every pretty girl that wandered into their orbit, and most perverse of all, Jim _could not_ seem to stop himself from spoiling any opportunity Artie had for... feminine comfort. It was as if, whether or not he had a lady of his own at hand, Jim delighted most in finding ways to make it impossible for Artie to enjoy similar attention in peace and quiet.

Artemus knew for a fact that Jim West wasn’t lacking for female interest. The ribbing seemed compulsive, almost like that of a younger brother who had never grown up, even when Jim himself was the most focused, professional agent Artie had ever had the pleasure of working with.

Fortunately for both of them, Artie wasn’t a kid any more himself. He’d learned at least a little more patience. Though a Jim who was teasing him until yet another beautiful woman slipped through Artie’s fingers was a Jim who was, indeed, trying Artie’s patience, Artie had yet to try to throttle his partner in his sleep. Though he had, once or twice, considered it.

Would still consider it, if it wouldn’t result in him losing the best partner he’d ever had. Jim was smart, ruthlessly violent when called for, and dogged like a dog with the last bone in Nevada. The United States was safer with Jim West on the job, and Artemus Gordon had never done better work than working by his side.

Still, he wished his friend wouldn’t make it so difficult to get laid once in a while.

Artie sipped at his bottle and lolled against the doorway, his hooded eyes looking half-asleep and fully intoxicated.

His expression never changed, but suddenly Artie could smell, as clearly as if it were the sound of horses’ hooves riding toward him then riding away, a wafting floral scent that smelled heavy and sweet on the cool night air. It grew closer, and Artie drew in a big breath, almost as though he were going to sneeze, as a cover for taking in all of the scent that he could. It was tuberose, fat and heady, a nearly pure Mexican oil if Artie was any judge. It was a sort of thick luxurious scent of hot-climate flowers, with the faintest tinge of menthol lurking in the background.

There was a woman passing by him in the night.

Using all his best moves pretending to be a lolling drunk, Artie made a very thorough examination of the environment around him. He could see nothing, and hear nothing. But the scent of the tuberose told its own tale.

If she was moving in the direction of the gambling hall, Artie figured, she was probably out to get involved in some trouble.

###

Jim had spent some time finding the right spot in the alleyway behind the gambling hall so as to be out of sight when the stocky mayor stomped past and into a doorway.

The mayor kept on going, not into the main gambling area, but into the shadows at the side of the building farthest away from the main street and traffic.

He seemed to be alone. Jim followed him as silently as he could. Ellis, Jim reminded himself, Alan Ellis, that was the short man’s name. No one who bothered to wear a hat that big could feel comfortable with his own stature. He also wore two pistols with surprisingly long barrels, as if the hat wasn’t enough of a giveaway.

But Jim couldn’t figure out the need for the robberies. He and Artie had been investigating Ellis for days. The man had a nice house courtesy of the town through his position as mayor, and a cattle ranch outside of town. He had a gold mine in California that his brother was working on his behalf, and no outrageously expensive tastes as far as anyone in town would tell Jim. Why would he need to commit armed robbery, not once, but over and over again?

The why, Jim felt sure, would become apparent once he found out the how.

Jim wondered what Artie was finding out right now about the complex political workings of this mysterious little town. Artie had a talent for digging up pertinent facts at just the right time, and a knack for watching people rather than beating them up that stood their investigations in good stead. 

He couldn’t spew his gratitude to Artie twenty-four hours a day, that didn’t come naturally to Jim. Instead he couldn’t resist baiting Artie now and again about this or that human interaction that Jim just knew Artie was collecting like spare diamonds, knowing they’d come in handy later in the investigation.

Some tiny corner of Jim's mind found it unreasonable that Artie should always be able to wrap everyone around him around his little finger. And perhaps another little corner was still a little stung every time a pretty girl preferred older, admittedly less handsome Artie to Jim's face and Jim's body. Jim knew what he looked like, and while he couldn’t blame discerning ladies for preferring someone with wit who could make them smile, he at least wanted to still be in the running. Sometimes he felt as though if he could just put Artie in the shade for a few minutes, he himself would seem attractive for his conversation as well as for his pretty face and his goddamn ass.

No point in blaming Artie for women’s tastes, Jim thought; after all, Jim mostly just grateful for Artie. He’d never had a partner more loyal, more creative in solving problems, or more calm in a fight. It was a relief right now just knowing Artemus Gordon was out there keeping watch.

Jim managed to catch the edge of the door and just managed to slide in after Ellis. 

The hallway he found himself in had several tight twists and turns, just like the one he’d seen earlier on the adjacent side of the building, but this one appeared to be free of guardian dogs.

Jim tried to stay out of sight, hanging back and following only when he figured he was out of both eyesight and earshot of Ellis. But he couldn’t ignore that at any moment he might turn the corner straight into the hands of a gang of bank robbers.

It would have wrung the nerves of a man less used to danger than Jim West. He kept the danger in mind but didn’t let it weigh him down. Every moment was full of its own possibilities and Jim didn’t worry much about what the possibilities of the next moment might be.

At last Ellis disappeared into a narrow door, closing it behind him. Hoping to eavesdrop on whatever business Ellis was conducting, Jim slid past the door to the next one and turned into the room behind it.

It was a parlour, well lit by gaslamp and comfortably appointed in plush red and gold furniture, but it was already occupied.

The occupant, however, couldn’t do much about Jim's entry.

She was tied to one of the chairs, hands behind her back, and, as Jim found as he moved to kneel in front of her and examine her situation, beneath the flounce of her skirt her ankles were tied to each other and to the chair legs. The arrangement kept her pretty well immobilized.

Jim flipped the skirt back down, one section of his brain making note of the shapeliness of the ankles in smooth silk stockings even as he calmly and deliberately removed the gag tied around her head and filling her mouth.

“Oh thank you,” the lady half-whispered as he freed her lips and tongue to move again. 

There was something muffled about her voice still, something odd, and Jim frowned, but she went on in the same distantly quiet voice and Jim wondered if perhaps the gag he’d removed was responsible for the odd aural effect.

“I’m Patricia McKenzie, I run the brothel on the less reputable side of town,” she said, fluttering her eyelashes at him even as she looked ruefully at the ropes holding her to the back of the chair.

“Miss McKenzie,” Jim acknowledged, as if they were having a proper introduction in this parlour rather than meeting in the rather bizarre circumstances they were in. He pulled a short blade from his boot and began slicing through the ropes that bound her. “Are you here on business?”

She gave a half-smile and tossed her head. Golden-brown ringlets of shining hair danced over her shoulders, and her dark brown eyes crinkled attractively at the corners. Jim imagined that she did rather well in her business. “If I were, I’d be tied to that nice comfortable settee over there, not this horrible chair.”

Jim acknowledged that with just an inclination of his head. “I can imagine that would be a preferable situation in many ways.” He had found over the years that, on average, women liked flattery, and flattery couched in the truth worked the best. She _would_ look fetching tied to that couch. For a moment he allowed himself a more-than-professional assessment of her figure. That creamy decolletage would look extraordinary, he decided, spilling out of her corset and really just begging for the attention of a man’s hands.

Pleasure, of course, was always secondary to business. “What’s your relationship with Mayor Ellis?”

She tossed her head again, and curled her lip. “None. Not even as a customer.”

That surprised him. “I thought the mayor had pretty full pockets.”

“Not enough to even rent a bathtub in my place, much less one of my girls. Honestly, he’s just a horrible man.”

“I’d like to hear more about it.”

Patricia McKenzie was rubbing her wrists ruefully, the peach color of her dress contrasting unflatteringly with the red rope burn on her wrists. “I’d be happy to tell you more, if we could get out of here first.”

“I should be able to oblige you there, Miss McKenzie.” Jim started for the door, one hand under her elbow. 

Before he could reach it, the door slammed open, bouncing on its hinges, to reveal a huge bruiser of a man rushing in.

“Too much noise,” Miss McKenzie muttered ruefully as the man jumped on Jim, landing a vicious right to his jaw.

Jim's head snapped back, and he took two more deep hits to the ribs before he got his feet under him and leaned forward, hitting the much bigger man with his own devastating jabs to the ribs. When the man bent over, he managed to land first a left, then a right on the man’s jaw, snapping his head first one direction and then the other. Then Jim brought his knee up to the bruiser’s jaw.

Slowly, the man fell forward on to his face on the carpet.

“Oh well done Mr. West!” Miss McKenzie clapped her hands, leaning over his shoulder to look down at the giant on the carpet, and yet somehow she didn’t sound all that gleeful. She made such a glossy, attractive picture, Jim didn’t even notice the faint mist of powder that arose from her clapping hands, forming a slight cloud around his head.

But he did notice that the sound seemed muffled, as if she were wrapped in fur. “Miss McKenzie, do you hear...”

But before he finished his sentence, Jim found himself grasping at the back of the very chair where she’d been tied up, trying to stay upright. The sides of the room were swimming, towards him, then away.

“Hear what, Mr. West?” Her voice seemed to come to him very faintly, as if through many walls.

Not a promising way to meet a lady, Jim thought as he collapsed on to the carpet and the world went dark.

###

Jim had missed the two a.m. check in and Artie was considering worrying.

The Swedish waiter had moved on from where he’d been enjoying his drink, on the back stairs of the hotel, and was wandering up and down the alleys behind Main Street.

Artemus figured he was one unlucky step away from some eager lawman picking him up as a vagrant. This town enjoyed bragging about its safety record in the state newspapers and on the signs into town. He didn’t doubt that the reputation for safety was deserved, though just not perhaps equally applicable to undercover Secret Service agents.

He ambled down the sidewalk in front of the gambling saloon. Its lamps were low, and only a few late die-hards were still inside playing cards. If he went in, he’d be awfully noticeable.

On the other hand, just walking in the front door had often proved to be a safer strategy than getting caught trying to sneak in somewhere.

Artie pretended to catch his foot on an uneven board on the walk, half-tripping, half-twisting into the doorframe of the saloon before stumbling his way unevenly in.

If he was going to make an entrance, he’d make an entrance.

All eyes were on him. Swiftly he took stock of the room. No Mayor Ellis, and no sign of Jim.

And interestingly, because he hadn’t forgotten his encounter in the alleyway, no women. At all.

Surely a gambling hall open this late would have some women inside, no?

“Hey you,” the barkeeper yelled. “Get back out on the street where you belong.”

“Ya, I go,” Artie mumbled in his best Swedish drunken voice. “I gotta go, yah, I just looking for a leetle re-fill on my jug here, my leetle jug.”

The barkeep came out from behind the bar. “I said get out.”

“Yah,” and Artie stumbled again, this time toward the side door, not the front.

“You bum, I’ll --”

But before the fellow could say another word Artie had “stumbled” through the side door and into the hallway where Jim had reported the silent attack dog.

Braced for teeth to close on his flesh, Artie nonetheless flung himself down the hallway, barely fitting his shoulders between one wall and the next, till he could thrust his shoulder against the closed door at the far end, breaking the slim bolt to make his way inside, wanted or not.

Inside the room he found a beautiful woman kneeling over a body on the floor.

A muscular, compact, male body.

Jim.

“ _Jim!”_ Artie found himself yelling, throwing himself forward toward his friend on the floor.

He was so engaged in rolling Jim over, noting that he still had a pulse, noting that he didn’t wake even when shaken and shouted at, that he didn’t notice the young woman clapping her hands together behind his head.

And her clapping didn’t make a sound.

Sound was becoming muffled, but he paid no attention to it, focused as he was on trying to revive Jim. Sound retreated at the same time as consciousness.

Within seconds, he collapsed over his friend’s body.

###

Jim came back to consciousness slowly. He’d been in odd situations before, and he didn’t startle easily. This one wasn’t boding well.

He was seated in a chair, the same one to which Miss McKenzie had been tied. His hands and feet were held with rough rope to the arms and legs. Miss McKenzie was still in the room.

But that wasn’t the oddest feature. There were two other odder features of his situation.

One was the addition of a large schoolroom chalkboard on one side of the parlor.

The other was that he couldn’t hear at all.

He tried to speak. “Miss McKenzie...”

No sound. He could hear no sound at all, not coming from his throat, not coming from anywhere.

Frowning prettily, Patricia McKenzie waved a piece of paper in his direction. She was mouthing something. He jerked his head back, willing her to face him properly so he could try to read her lips. “Found this” \- something about she found this?

She walked over to hold the paper in front of him. It was printed on heavy stock with dark ink, a fresh printing press’ work, if Jim wasn’t mistaken.

 _A Scientific Breakthrough!_ the flyer said in the sort of print used on theater handbills and advertisements for snake-oil salesmen.

It went on in a more restrained fashion:

_Sound Silencing Serum has been applied to you, along with a temporary soporific. Do not panic. The serum absorbs all vibration on a molecular level, and sound, of course, consists solely of vibration. You have breathed the serum in, and therefore exposed your vocal cords. The serum has also touched your eardrums. You will not be able to hear, or speak._

Jim looked sharply up at Miss McKenzie.

 _Isn’t this awful?_ He could just read the motion of her lips. She turned away and said something else, he had no idea what. Jim stomped one of his boots on the floor, trying to get her attention. He heard absolutely nothing.

Immediately she returned to him, knelt down in front of him. She made sure to face him as she spoke, slowly.

 _This is awful!_ she said again. _I had no idea Mayor Ellis would do something like this. Why would he attack you this way?_

 _Did he attack you?_ , Jim tried to ask her, but no sound emerged from his mouth, at least no sound that he could hear, and Patricia didn’t seem able to read lips.

She was still looking worriedly at him, from very close up. Her soft brown eyes searched his. They were pretty, but they were doing nothing for him, Jim had to admit. This was a peculiarly tough situation, and if he couldn’t use his fists and he couldn’t talk his way out of it, he was going to be pressed for options. 

She placed a soft hand against his face.

It was warm, and smooth, and she smelled feminine and clean and, the thought came to him, willing. He’d never noticed that a willing woman had a particular scent before, but in the circumstances, he was noticing it now.

He started to look around the room for other exits.

She held his face in her hands and brought him back to look at her lips. _I can’t lift you like this, and I can’t find that little knife you had earlier. Where is it? And do you know why this man is here?_

She stood and backed up, and in front of him on the floor, Jim recognized the supine figure of what looked like an immigrant waiter but which read to Jim as nothing more or less than the body of Artemus Gordon.

He felt the unwelcome startlement of panic.

What was Artie doing here? Was he alive? Was he hurt? How long had he been out?

Patricia McKenzie immediately moved in Jim's mind from the category of damsel in distress to the category of suspect number one. Whatever she was doing here, she knew more than she was saying. At the very least, she most likely knew damn well that the little knife had fallen under the settee she had previously been so admiring, while he’d been fighting the big man who had burst in on them. A man who was also now mysteriously gone.

People came and went very quietly here.

Jim looked the woman in the eye.

He was not unaware of his looks. In fact, just the opposite: he was _extremely_ aware of his looks. He enjoyed being the object of attention in nearly every situation, and even when he didn’t enjoy it, it was often tactically advantageous. Right now, without his voice, without his hands, he had very little with which to persuade Miss McKenzie to find a way to help him.

What he had, he knew, was one pair of extraordinarily blue, extraordinarily expressive, extraordinarily large and sparkling eyes.

Jim tried to remember Artie’s advice on acting.

“It’s not what you say, Jim my boy, it’s how you say it,” Artemus had told him, as they’d prepared to go undercover in New Orleans. “Your feet, your hands, the way you hold your head, they all talk. And if they can see your eyes, you can tell them volumes. People who believe in thought transference, I personally believe it’s because they’ve had the experience of looking deep into someone else’s eyes and understanding exactly what that person wanted to say. Let your eyes talk. Let them see it.”

Jim didn’t think he’d ever have any sort of a major future on the theater boards. But he had not much at his disposal right now, and the sight of Artie’s limp body was rattling his composure more than he wanted to let on. If there had ever been a time to try to seduce a woman with his eyes alone, this was the time.

Jim spoke, knowing no sound was coming out, but thinking that even if she couldn’t read his lips, it would help what he was trying to convey with his eyes.

_It’s okay. I need your help. Help me, and I’ll help you. Find a way to set me free._

He shook his tied hands for emphasis.

 _I want to_ , she said, her brows pulled together again.

Just then the door opened.

And in came the mayor, followed by the big bruiser of a man who’d been in earlier. He should have been out longer, in Jim's professional opinion, but then he had no idea how long he himself had been unconscious. Drugged unconscious, because otherwise there was no way he would have missed Artie’s entrance.

The major immediately began talking to Patricia. She was shaking her head no.

But she didn’t look alarmed.

No, she didn’t look the least bit alarmed. 

She looked angry.

She turned her back to Jim, in a manner he felt was probably deliberate.

Yes, Patricia McKenzie was undoubtedly working with Mayor Ellis, the head of the bank-robbing gang.

###

“Get on with your business, Ellis, he didn’t fall for your clumsy subterfuge.”

Ellis knew he could take umbrage at her tone, but he also knew it wouldn’t do him one damn bit of good. He’d never met a tougher, colder woman than Patricia McKenzie, and he knew she didn’t care a fig about his feelings, whether they were about her tone or anything else.

She looked like she was restraining herself from sneering. “Don’t you have some banks to rob? Somewhere else? Far away from here?”

She gestured to the giant man standing next to him and he picked the other secret agent up off the floor as if he were a doll. Plopped him on the couch, tying his hands and feet together.

“Can’t I take one night off from bank robbin’?” Ellis didn’t want to sound whiny, but he couldn’t help it.

Patricia shrugged a shoulder, seated herself in a chair opposite him, keeping her face turned away from the awake agent, tilting her head into her hand as if she were overwrought. But her voice was hard as steel as she said, “That’s up to you. You’re the one who came up with the idea of paying for services rendered from my girls for all the ranchers and businessmen in this town so they’d vote for you. It’s nothing to me if you keep up your little scheme or not. My business was doing just fine before you came along, and it’ll be doing just fine long after you’re gone.”

“If you didn’t charge me so damn much,” the mayor grumbled.

She smiled into her hand. “I can charge you whatever I like. I don’t have any competition in this town, and you know it.” She tossed her head, sending her glossy curls scattering over her shoulder, and looked up at him with a very real glare in her eyes. “This is your town, you made it this way. The rest of us are just living in it.”

“You’re still holdin’ that last blackmail over my head,” he muttered again, resting his hands on the grips of his pistols. He didn’t like being beholden to a woman, and especially not this one. She was mean as an angry snake, this one.

“You can call it blackmail, I like to think of it as coming clean. The women of this town encourage their husbands to vote for you, because they like a town where there’s no whores in the saloons, and I keep to my own place on the other side of town. But they wouldn’t be so thrilled with their husbands voting you back into office if they knew how many services you’d purchased from my place on their husbands’ behalf.”

They’d had this argument a dozen times before. Alan Ellis didn’t know why he bothered to keep having it. He wasn’t seeing a way out of the hole that he’d dug himself into.

On the couch, the other snoop moved, and maybe moaned, but no sound came from his mouth.

“He’s waking up,” observed Patricia.

She walked over to his side, brushing her hand through his hair and removing it. Below the sandy wig, there were dark curls, flattened against his head by the pressure of the wig. She ran her fingers through them, loosening the curls. He opened his eyes, and they were dark and intelligent and immediately darted all around the room.

When his eyes lit on his partner, tied to a chair across the room, the man grunted.

Patricia could feel his muscular effort through her gentle touch on his forehead, but he made no sound. His eyes, wary now, came back to her.

Slowly, she peeled off his fake mustache.

Underneath he was surprisingly attractive, with a mobile face, younger than he’d first appeared.

She smiled to herself.

“And I’ve just had a delicious idea about how I’m going to spend _my_ evening,” she said to Ellis, still keeping her face turned away from West.

“Get out, and don’t come back here till morning unless you want me spilling my story to all the ladies in this town. I don’t care what you do as long as you’re not doing it here. Though I would recommend that you do something to improve your cash situation. Your balance owed isn’t really getting any smaller.”

Snorting and sucking his teeth, Alan Ellis didn’t look happy. But he also couldn’t think of any alternative to that thought. So he left.

###

The woman had the mayor under her control, Jim was sure of it. The mayor didn’t look happy at all as he trailed out of the room, looking mostly as if he were a bad little boy being sent to his room.

Jim's eyes darted over to Artie, starting to struggle on the settee.

Artemus could be a sucker for a pretty girl, Jim knew. He had to somehow get the information to his partner that this woman wasn’t a victim and wasn’t to be trusted.

He couldn’t make any sound at all that Artie would hear; he suspected that Artie had been dosed with the same stuff as himself, given that Artie didn’t appear to even be attempting to talk. There was no situation that could come to mind where Artie didn’t at least try to talk.

Even if he could manage to tap out Morse code on his chair leg or the table, Artie couldn’t hear it.

Their captor, however, would.

She was walking toward him now.

She had one hand up to her face as if she were wiping tears away from the corners of her eyes, and let the other trail over Artie’s arm where he lay on the couch as she walked toward him.

The touch on Artie made Jim wary.

“Oh Mr. West,” she appeared to sob, sinking to her knees in front of him with her eyes buried in her hands but making sure he could see her mouth so he could see what she was saying. “I so want to help you. But if I release you, that horrible mayor will kill my mother. He is keeping her captive at his ranch.”

Almost feeling the urge to smile, Jim just looked at her. He watched her peep at him from behind her hands.

And shook his head, very slowly, _no_.

Startled, Patricia McKenzie reared back a little. Her hands dropped to his thighs but her face quickly had a very different expression. “No? what do you mean, no?”

He mouthed exaggeratedly at her so she could not fail to be able to read his words. _I mean no._

“No what? No you won’t help me?”

Jim gave a little shake of his head. He widened his eyes to indicate that wasn’t all.

“You mean... no, he’s not holding my mother captive?”

Slowly Jim nodded.

Patricia sat back on her heels. “Well, aren’t you the clever snooping lawman.”

Slowly Jim nodded again.

###

Artie was cataloging everything in the room, wondering what could be used to escape the situation.

There were any number of things that could be used against the big fellow to get out of this, but not until he could get his hands free.

He could spring the knife he had hidden up his right sleeve, but he worried that he wouldn’t be able to get himself free before that big fellow could unloose a bullet or two into Jim. The man’s face was impassive, a shovel-sized heap of no expression with a handlebar mustache and eyes that told him nothing.

He also was worried that Jim would fall for the woman’s sad sobbing act. Jim didn’t trust women as a rule, but he didn’t let that stop them from getting awfully close, and one day Artie figured that would be the end of Jim West. He didn’t want that day to be today.

As she’d walked past him toward his partner, Artie had picked up a very definite, very slightly mentholated, waxy white floral scent. The scent of tuberose.

This woman was the one who’d walked past him on the street, somehow so silently that her footfalls had made absolutely no sound in the dark. And people who snuck around silently in the dark generally weren’t people who ought to be trusted.

He didn’t know whether or not she knew that he knew that she wasn’t to be trusted. Aside from some brushing touches, her attention seemed to be entirely on his partner. This was both a sensible reaction from a human being who could see, and a possible distraction, the one he needed to escape.

But the big bruiser man, who already had some abrasions and contusions on his face, and who had therefore most likely already met Jim, was simply standing by the door, a pistol in his hands, and Artie would have bet his last dollar that that pistol was fully loaded.

This was not a good situation.

###

Patricia leaned away from Jim, and stood, huffing out a breath that neither of her guests could hear.

Oh well. Perhaps the direct route was the best route after all. In her business, she had found that subtlety didn’t really sell.

She backed away, and Jim's eyes instantly went to those of his partner.

Artemus was looking right at him, a serious look in his dark eyes, and they flicked between her and Jim as he gave a very clear shake of his head, _no_.

Patricia didn’t even have time to take offense. Jim mouthed back, also very clearly, _I know._

Artemus gave a half-nod, apparently satisfied that his partner at least knew that she wasn’t to be trusted. Then Artemus looked back at Jim, lifting an eyebrow to say very clearly, _Now what?_

Jim just shrugged.

Patricia laughed out loud. Oh, her idea was a good one, and it was going to work, work beautifully in fact.

“Mauricier,” she called, and the big fellow by the door perked up, “bring over another chair and make our new guest comfortable next to Mr. West, would you?”

###

Jim watched impassively as the giant set another chair next to his own, but his muscles tensed as the giant went to the couch, easily lifted Artie, and set him in that chair.

He could see Artie’s eyes traveling all around the room, looking for weapons, looking for escape routes, and he could see Artie finding none. There was only one door to the place, with an armed guard; no windows, no shelves or other cabinetry that might lead to a hidden entrance, and as far as Jim's keen eyesight could tell from examining the patterns in the wallpaper, no hidden seams that would open up either.

It didn’t seem as though whatever would happen next would be good.

###

Patricia walked towards them, where they now sat side by side, tapping her lip with one fingernail and looking pleased with herself.

Stopping in front of Jim, she leaned over him just slightly, and slapped him.

She was watching Artie. She saw the color come into his face, saw his eyes snap, and his expression turn grim.

She knelt again in front of Jim, placed her hands again on his thighs, leaned in, and kissed him.

Jim didn’t care for being hit, but it didn’t really faze him either. Likewise, he hadn’t asked for this particular attention, but he wasn’t averse to kissing a pretty woman.

His lips opened under hers and he kissed her thoroughly, and she wondered vaguely if he was hoping his technique would impress her enough to let him go.

It certainly might, she admitted to herself as she rocked back on her heels, but reminded herself as she pulled away to look not at him, but at his partner.

The lovely brown-eyed fellow was now looking more puzzled, and more regretful, somehow.

But he didn’t look embarrassed.

Yes, this was going to work.

Leaning back on her heels, Patricia McKenzie pulled the combs out of her hair.

As her curls tumbled down around her neck, she walked on her knees over in front of the brown-eyed man, smiled as she leaned over him, and kissed him.

###

Artie was taken aback. She was disconcertingly pretty, and she’d just been kissing his partner. In fact, he realized, that must be Jim he was tasting on her lips.

The thought made him a bit dizzy again, almost as dizzy as the drug had made him earlier.

What could possibly be her gain?

 _What is your name_? She mouthed the question right in front of his face on so he couldn’t miss it.

Artie just stared at her bemusedly.

Nonchalantly she leaned over to his side - and slapped Jim again.

Artie frowned. Goddamn the woman. What was her problem?

 _What is your name?_ She mouthed again, exaggeratedly, so he couldn’t miss it if he could read lips at all.

Frankly puzzled, Artie looked over at Jim. Jim just shrugged. He didn’t seem to have any reason in mind as to why Artie shouldn’t give his name.

 _Artie_ , he mouthed back.

Patricia grinned a delighted grin. _Artie_ , she seemed to say.

Yeah, sure, why not, thought Artie, continuing to wonder when they were going to be able to make a break for it. It was going to complicate the escape, being unable to hear any pursuit.

Gracefully standing again, Patricia walked over to the chalkboard that was standing against one wall.

Maybe she’d said something as she’d gone, because the giant came over and started to undo the buttons down the back of her peach-colored dress.

She picked up a piece of chalk and wrote while the giant unbuttoned her. ARDIE, she spelled out.

Artie shook his head no.

Tapping her lip again, Patricia regarded her spelling thoughtfully. She rubbed out the D with a finger and wrote in a T.

Yes, Artie nodded.

She just nodded, exaggeratedly again.

And as the giant loosened the upper bodice of her dress away from her body, leaving her in corset and skirt, she wrote in large enough letters on the chalkboard for them both to clearly see, HAVE YOU TWO EVER SHARED A WOMAN BEFORE?

###

Jim almost wanted to laugh, but this situation was deadly serious.

Whatever this lady was in the middle of, she had something more personal on her mind right now. 

Jim didn’t mind; it was when women were in the middle of something personal that they were most easy to escape. Whatever it was was nothing personal to Jim, and he wouldn’t be distracted by her charms to the extent that he would miss an opportunity here.

But the question was a new one on him, he had to admit.

He looked over at Artie, who, thankfully, was looking just as bemused as Jim felt.

And Artie looked back at him.

He knew what was running through Artie’s mind.

Had the girl in Chicago counted? They both knew that Jim had given her exquisite attention with his mouth and caused her to reach her peak in that alley behind the counterfeiters’ warehouse, and that not half an hour later, Artie had had the girl extremely... vigorously engaged atop a crate in the back of the warehouse, which was why she hadn’t come to the counterfeiters’ aid when Jim had broken through the back door with the sheriff's men and rounded the criminals up.

She must have been wet from his attentions before she’d submitted to Artie’s. 

Jim didn’t think about it much, and they’d never talked about it, but it was the kind of thing that they knew about each other, knew about the lengths they’d go to solve a case and carry out justice.

Or that _pistolera_ in New Mexico, who had flat out told Jim that if he made her come until she said “enough”, she would let him go. He’d been game for the challenge - she had been extremely beautiful, with a figure like a goddess and silky shining black hair that reached the back of her thighs - and he liked to think that he’d have been able to reach her limits on his own efforts. But when Artie had finally broken into the cabin, finding Jim with sweat beading down his back as he drove himself into the woman like a hammer while she desperately sought her fourth orgasm, Jim had to admit he’d been happy to let Artie take over, and his captor hadn’t seemed to mind at all - in fact, he could remember her happy scream as Jim had slipped out the back, gun at the ready, legs trembling from all the work he’d just put in but eager to find the horses and get them both out of there. She’d cheerfully let them go. He could still see her flushed face and tousled hair as she waved at them both, completely naked, from her doorway.

Or hell, how would they even count the countless times they’d had lovely women visiting them in the Wanderer, and they could hear each other’s technique through the walls in the train, and, though they never discussed that either, it added something to the experience, Jim suspected, for both of them? There’d even been an occasion where the ladies had apparently decided something on their own, and after a few hours, the brunette had disappeared from his bed and suddenly the blond was there. He knew for a fact that the brunette had just crawled into Artie’s bed, and if what happened after that didn’t count as “sharing” a woman, he wasn’t sure what did.

In fact, that might have happened twice.

He could see in Artie’s face that his partner was running through some of the same memories.

They looked at each other, trying to telegraph through their eyes, _Did that count? What about that other time..._

Patricia laughed out loud, but they couldn’t hear her, of course.

Darting over to them, she waved a hand between them. They stopped looking at each other and looked again at her.

She tapped her own nose, asking for their attention. Her eyes were twinkling.

She ran back to the chalkboard and wrote in large letters, IT WASN’T SUPPOSED TO BE A HARD QUESTION!!

###

Artie almost did laugh at that one. She had, at least, a sense of humor.

Patricia picked up a rag and wiped down the board quickly, with big swipes, less worried about getting the board entirely clean than starting fresh. The delicate bones of her clavicle stood out as she worked quickly, and her hips swayed. She was lovely, and if this was going to keep going in this direction, Artie was at least grateful for that.

She began to write more quickly, in smaller letters, filling up the board.

_This is Mauricier._

_He loves me._

Here she cast a sweet smile toward the giant, and that smile looked utterly genuine.

_What he likes is to watch me enjoying myself._

_And what I will enjoy tonight is you two._

Here she turned for effect, just to make sure they were getting it, throwing an arch smile back over one shoulder towards them for their benefit.

Oh, they got it. Jim was looking thoughtful, nothing else. Artie looked a bit more disconcerted, but neither of them were acting outraged.

She turned back to the board.

_I’m sorry you can’t hear my instructions, but we’ll have to make do. If you behave for me, we will let you go and provide the antidote for the silencing serum._

Jim looked as if he was interested in that deal, and Artie was nothing if not used to following Jim's lead. 

The two men looked at each other, for what seemed to Artie like a long time.

Jim's eyes weren’t telling him anything; it was Jim's poker face, and he was studying Artie, looking more for information from Artie than giving anything away. Jim wanted to know if Artie was going to be okay with this. There were some emotions chasing each other over Artie’s features, so fast Jim couldn’t even follow them.

Jim knew damn well poker wasn’t Artie’s game. He just met Artie’s look levelly.

Artie didn’t shrug, he couldn’t feel that cavalier, but he gave Jim a look that very clearly said, _what can you do?_

Jim looked at Artie just a second longer, and Patricia would have called it a fond look.

Then he looked at her. _Okay,_ he soundlessly said.

She nodded, looking him in the eyes. This was for her to enjoy, and she was going to enjoy every second of it. And he had beautiful, beautiful eyes.

She turned and scribbled quickly on the board, _Which of you is better with his mouth?_

When she turned back toward the men, Jim immediately inclined his head.

###

Instantly Artie followed suit, adding a little sideways cock to his head to try to indicate that he really meant it, but Patricia just waggled a finger at them.

They couldn’t hear her say “Ah ah, first man in wins the prize.”

She didn’t know why the bigger, older man seemed so willing to follow his partner’s lead. She had a hunch, but she wouldn’t know her answer for sure for a while.

So she took Mauricier’s pistol away and held it on the men while the giant slipped out of the room.

Artie felt Jim tense next to him, but the barrel of the gun was trained straight at Jim's chest, and as ... well, direct as this young lady seemed to be, there was nothing that would make Artie risk that gun going off. He tried to lean over and nudge Jim with his shoulder, and even that much movement garnered Jim's attention and by the time they were looking at their captors again, Mauricier had returned with a tray that he placed on the floor by the settee, and resumed his spot, pistol at the ready.

Artie was just resigning himself to watching Jim pleasure a pretty woman - not the worst way in the world to spend an evening, he figured, though not his first choice - when Patricia went back to the chalkboard.

_I’m going to move Artie. And then I’m going to cut you free Jim. Both of you behave yourselves or Mauricier will not feel bad about disposing of trespassers._

Move him? What?

He soon saw her goal. Patricia moved over to Artie, cutting his feet loose first, then leading him over to the couch and seating him on it with his back against its back.

She leaned into him, running her fingertips under the edge of Artie’s collar and brushing his skin. He couldn’t hear what she said, but he could follow her with lip-reading well enough, and he suspected she knew it. _Behave yourself or I will make sure that he dies first._

Swallowing, Artie just nodded a tiny nod. He believed her; she had a ruthless streak in her that made her a match for Jim, he thought bitterly to himself, the only moment of bitterness he was going to allow himself. His endlessly competitive partner was going to yet again best him in another competition. Well. As he’d thought. It wasn’t the worst way to spend an evening.

He relaxed into the couch just as Patricia led Jim over to the settee.

And realized her goal only when she sat her skirt-clad bottom down in front of his lap, spreading his legs wide and scooting backward to duck under his still tied hands.

Really? She wouldn’t be happy until she’d somehow made him a part of this?

She settled herself leaning back against his chest, nestling her bottom against his vulnerable groin, his arms around her, and tugged Jim forward to kneel before her knees.

Oh, thought Artie as Patricia gracefully hooked one of her legs up over his, flipping her skirts up to her waist, and baring herself to a dishevelled, still wrists-tied Jim West.

Who looked at her, not Artie, with the same level look with which he rose to every challenge, before he leaned forward and worked his mouth delicately against her curls.

Artie felt her sigh.

As a diabolical mastermind, Artie realized, this woman had something going for her that a lot of diabolical masterminds did not. She knew what she wanted, and she went straight for it.

Jim was good at this, and Artie admired, as always, the coiled strength in his body as he held himself leaning forward in just the right spot. Even with his feet untied and the ability to lean his bound hands against the seat of the settee, it was an awkward position for Jim, and it said something about his physical capability as well as his ability to focus that he didn’t seem to let it distract him at all.

It seemed like practically no time before Artie felt the woman’s breath begin to catch. It was odd, feeling rather than hearing her breathing accelerating, seeing only the flush of color rising up from the curve of her exposed breasts. She was going to come, he could feel it.

He felt some stirrings of unwanted interest in the proceedings. He was human, she was right there, and watching -- and feeling -- this was ratcheting up Artie’s heart rate just a little.

Not as much as hers, he thought a little peevishly. Jim was clearly capable of doing some magical things with that mouth.

She tilted her hips up just a half an inch and _bang_ , he felt the orgasm go through her, felt her shuddering against him, pressing herself back into his solid body and shaking as she let herself back down against the seat.

Reflexively, his arms tightened around her.

Artie wondered if he should keep score.

Belatedly he hoped that she didn’t have the stamina of that little _pistolera_ in New Mexico. He had better contribute something to this game or it could last all night.

Just looking at the way Jim was holding himself upright made Artie’s legs ache. The way he looked up at them -- looked up at Artie, it seemed to him, though that made no sense, it was probably just because his head was right behind the woman’s head -- the clear water-blue of his eyes, the set of his jaw, said he’d be prepared to do this all night long if required.

If Artie could speed this up somehow, surely that would help.

Artie lifted his tied wrists in front of the woman, and rubbed his cheek against hers where she rested on his shoulder. He knew he was stubbly, it was late at night, but he hoped she would take it for the encouraging gesture he meant it to be.

She looked up at him, still catching her breath, her chestnut-brown eyes just a few inches from his own, and she nodded.

He felt her turn and say something but heard no sound at all.

Mauricier came close enough to saw quickly through the ropes on Artie’s wrists, uncaring if they left burn marks on Artie. The giant bent over just to quickly but thoroughly kiss the woman in Artie’s arms.

It was an awkward position, Jim still kneeling on the floor in front of her between them and Mauricier, undoubtedly just as the woman intended; it made it impossible for Artie to launch himself at the giant. Dammit.

The giant retreated to the far wall, the woman tilted Jim's face up by the chin and said something to him. Jim shrugged and began his efforts again.

Artie had to give it to him, the man had stamina.

Aside from his sympathetically aching knees, Artie began to be uncomfortable with the idea that the memories he was going to take away from all this would be hours of watching Jim lick a beautiful woman to completion. It went straight past titillating to torture. He was hard himself, and uncomfortable. He had nothing to watch except Jim's technique. If he started thinking that much about Jim's mouth... He couldn’t start thinking that much about Jim's mouth. That way lay madness.

Artie used his newly freed hands to stroke down her throat, her shoulders, and her admittedly magnificent breasts. He felt her sigh again as he settled his hands over her nipples, the dark of his skin looking even darker against that pale flesh, and felt her jump, just a little, when he tweaked both nipples with his thumbs at the same time.

The motion gave him an idea, but he would wait till he could try to enlist Jim before he did anything else. Jim was in the most vulnerable position, both to the giant’s fists and to his bullet, and his hands were still tied.

Nuzzling down her throat, Artie whispered a suggestion to her to let him inside.

No sound emerged from him, just a susurration of air, but maybe his moving hand was the real message. She seemed to get his idea all the same. She spread her thighs wider, causing Jim to look up for a moment, and Artie ran one of his hands down her front to touch her where Jim had made her dripping wet.

He saw Jim meet his eyes, and flicked his own down and to the left, where one of his hands just brushed the woman’s collarbone. He could throttle her, his eyes told Jim. Even the threat might make the giant let them go.

The corner of Jim's eyes tightened, like they did when Jim was concerned, and he just shook his head infinitesimally _no_.

Okay. Artie was willing to follow his lead. If Jim had a plan on how to get out of here that didn’t involve choking their unwelcome hostess into submission, Artie was willing to play along and see where that went.

The woman wiggled herself back against Artie, reminding him that he was supposed to be rewarding her for her compliance in opening up for him.

He obliged her by sliding two of his fingers inside her.

The squirming, at least, was enthusiastic, and for the first time Artie rather regretted the enforced silence because he thought he might be missing out on some pretty friendly compliments about his hands. He prided himself on his dexterity, and from the heaving of her breasts, their hostess here would be willing to agree with him.

Committing himself to the course of action, Artie leaned over and grabbed her thigh with one of his hands, letting her head and shoulders slide down his lap as he pulled her leg towards his chest. She spun nearly ninety degrees and appeared to make sounds only of agreement when he slid his fingers back inside her, moving them in ways that had received positive feedback before.

Immediately Jim could see what he had done, and followed his lead for once.

Because at this angle he could lean forward and use his tongue on the woman without blocking Artie’s hand and without Artie blocking him.

It was an excellent plan, if Artie did say so himself. Within minutes she was shuddering her way through another orgasm.

He touched Jim's shoulder to let his friend know to back off. Jim didn’t seem to have noticed her coming. 

When Jim looked down, he could tell from Patricia’s flushed, sweating face and broad smile, not to mention her breathing as hard as if she had just run a mile, that she had finished again.

Except with this woman there didn’t seem to be the word “finish” in her vocabulary.

Her hips moved again as if she wanted more attention, more stimulation. Artie’s fingers were still inside her, for heaven’s sake.

So Jim slid two of his fingers inside her as well.

He’d checked again with Artie first, his eyes flicking to his friend’s, and moved just slow enough that Artie could have stopped him, if he’d had some reason to do so. It felt far more personal than the way he was already touching the woman between them, to slide the back of his hand against Artie’s and fit his fingers into the already snug, spasming space alongside Artie’s more artistic hands. The scars from a thousand fights that roughened the back of his knuckles rubbed against Artie, not Patricia. When he felt his own fingers trying to slide between Artie’s, he pulled his hand forward just a bit, and brushed her core with his thumb.

The effect was electric. Clearly Jim had touched an important nerve. Patricia was moaning, he could see the muscles in her throat lock and her eyes clenched closed. In complete silence, it was mesmerizing to watch. Her legs spread even farther as if she wanted nothing more than to impale herself upon their hands.

Quickly cutting a look over toward their guard, Jim found Mauricier’s attention was entirely upon his lady. He didn’t seem to care that Jim's foot was wandering across the carpet, trying to find the small blade he had lost under this settee earlier that evening. On the other hand, Jim couldn’t find it either, so the big man’s focus wasn’t really working to Jim's advantage.

Deciding to check in on his partner, Jim looked the other direction.

Artie was flushed, the muscles in his shoulders bunched as he held Patricia in the slightly awkward position and also managed to continue to press gently inside her. Jim could feel Artie’s fingers moving back and forth, just slightly, taking advantage of the way Patricia was utterly filled to gently massage the sensitive walls of the space they were sharing.

Artie’s collar had come open, and Jim could see a slight bead of sweat gathering at the base of his throat. He had a sudden, bizarre urge to lick it.

This was a very peculiar situation, Jim thought calmly to himself, and realized two things: one, that he himself was hard, and two, that behind Patricia’s writhing, orgasming body pressed into Artie’s belly and his thighs, Artie was hard too.

Jim found himself hoping she didn’t have the stamina of that little _pistolera_ in New Mexico. That woman had nearly killed him. This one seemed to have had her third orgasm already, but unfortunately, she didn’t show any signs of slowing.

Suppressing a sigh, he looked around the room one more time, then returned his attention to the lady. If they weren’t getting out of this situation till she was happy with them, he would make damn sure she was happy with them.

For the first time he wished Artie weren’t here for this with him. He always wanted Artie by his side, truth be told. But this just seemed... sordid, too sordid for Artie, who had such a big heart and wore it sometimes on his sleeve and didn’t deserve to be used like this.

What if he had asked Artie to do this with him? What if he’d found a pretty little lady on his own, and convinced her to come back to the Wanderer for an evening of debauchery with him and an old friend of his? What if he’d convinced Artie to relax in their downtime by joining them in their bed and doing their damnedest to spend a lighthearted evening enjoying themselves with her?

Artie would have done it in a heartbeat, Jim knew that. Maybe that was why he’d never suggested it. Jim knew Artie would do anything Jim really wanted. If he never put it to the test, he’d never have to find out if there were any limits to that.

But he wished that this were just a lady they’d both liked the look of, taking her to their bed.

Just then Artie looked up, caught Jim's eye. And he must have divined some of Jim's thoughts, he must have. Maybe thought transference worked only in such silence, or maybe those acting lessons were paying off. But then Artie had never needed acting lessons in the first place. Because he could see Artie’s face clearly saying to him, _She’s not so bad. We might as well try to enjoy this._

Jim _had_ had worse Saturday nights.

###

Patricia was beginning to feel that if she let them, these two men could coax her body into coming continuously, perhaps without stopping. She was climbing a mountain and she didn’t want to come down.

And in Mauricier’s eyes, she could see that he wanted to watch her going farther.

He had a glorious erection, her beloved did; she could see it in his trousers, pressing against the seam, crossing his groin in thick magnificence. She’d never met anyone as well endowed as Mauricier.

But that wasn’t why she loved him.

She loved him because he loved her, just as she was. He loved watching her enjoying all the pleasure she could get out of her body, and he loved being the one making it possible for her.

He hadn’t been treated with the silencing serum. He just didn’t talk much. She shuddered imagining the things he would say to her later tonight, when she was enjoying that evidence of his desire and he was enjoying her relaxed, sated body.

Shuddering pressed something inside her against one of Jim's mobile fingers. Or perhaps it was Artie’s. She could feel herself climbing toward the peak once again.

And she wanted more.

Gasping, she managed to push herself up off the talented Artie’s lap and back toward Jim West.

Who was still, damn him to hell, fully dressed.

No, that wouldn’t do. He was mussed from pleasuring her, his lips reddened, and his eyes wary. She took in the shock of thick brushed-back hair, and the line of his thickly muscled shoulders and back relaxed in coiled strength beneath his clothes. He was, she admitted to herself, one of the most simply beautiful men she had ever seen in her life. She should be enjoying more of him than this.

She gestured, and Mauricier came forward and sliced quickly through the rope tying Jim's wrists.

Scrabbling clumsily at his buttons, she pushed at the magnificent blue brocade waistcoat under his jacket.

After once again glancing Artie’s way (would he ever do _any_ thing if Artie didn’t agree to it, Patricia thought grumpily?), Jim quickly doffed his jacket, then the waistcoat, shirt, and collar beneath.

Naked to the waist he was breathtaking. The muscles of his chest wound down to equally defined muscles in his lean, tanned belly, holding him upright like an animal ready to leap on its prey. Sculptors couldn’t do that body justice, Patricia thought to herself.

Looking up at Artie’s locked and flexing jaw above her, she suspected that, even if he wouldn’t say it in so many words, Artie would agree with her.

Regaining her breath and some distance from Artie, she pulled at Jim's belt too.

And maybe it was her imagination, but this time Jim seemed to hesitate, if only for a moment. And he didn’t look at Artie.

But maybe she had imagined it, because he pulled off his boots fast, and peeled out of his skin-tight trousers even faster. As one would have suspected, he wore nothing underneath them, and the rest of him matched his torso: sculpted, muscular perfection, from his narrow, perfectly symmetrical sun-browned feet to the cock jutting away from the curves and hollows of his groin between a horse-rider’s massive thighs. His balls were already drawn up tight; he was excited.

For the first time Patricia cursed the silencing serum. It made some things easier, but she wished she could talk to him now. She wanted to know what aroused Mr. West more: her wet, heated body, or the flushed muscles of his friend Artie just behind her.

Ah well.

Standing to slip out of her skirts, Patricia bent over and picked up the small pot of lubricating grease, put it into Jim's hands.

Somehow she trusted him to know what to do with it.

Jim looked down at it in his hand. He did.

###

He looked again at Artie. He knew he was looking at Artie more and more as this thing wore on. He couldn’t help it. It wasn’t personal, he knew it wasn’t personal. He had used his body in far more disturbing ways in the course of an investigation, and as far as he could see, he and Artie might even get to walk away from this one unhurt, especially if she restored their hearing and speech.

But Artie was _right there_. And he knew Artie didn’t react well to seeing Jim badly treated. They couldn’t talk; he couldn’t reassure Artie the way he wanted to. That he was fine, that all he wanted was for Artie to be fine too, that they would walk away from this barely worse for wear, that it was no big deal.

He didn’t have the ability to talk to Artie, and right now talking to Artie was important.

Furthermore, something _was_ wrong with Artie. The older man had a slightly unhappy look lurking around the back of his eyes, and though Jim knew Artie could make all of this better probably instantly with a few well-chosen words, they didn’t have those words at their disposal. This damn woman was using them as dolls for her sexual fulfillment, and that wasn’t worth anger for Jim, he’d been used for worse, but it was putting him in an awkward position with the one person in the world who really mattered to him, and there didn’t seem to be anything he could do about it.

Hell with her, he had to have a talk with Artie.

Dropping the jar, and under the guise of pressing himself against Patricia and leaning his head into the crook of her shoulder, Jim grabbed one of Artie’s free hands in one of his own, tapped into his palm using the Morse code they both knew so well.

_You ok?_

The touch pulled Artie out of his reverie, and he looked over and met Jim’s eyes with his own. And there was his Artie, and his familiar Artie smile.

_OK, Jim._

He so wished he could hear that “Jim”. Artie could say it a million ways.

He tapped, _Not look happy._

_Worried about you._

That made Jim frown. Worried about _him_? 

_I’m fine._

And Artie looked at him with his dark brown eyes, usually so filled with humor and fierce intelligence, and they were sad.

And Artie tapped back, _You deserve so much better than this_.

Frowning, Jim looked around. A naked, pretty, willing woman, and Artie safe and sound. He’d had Saturday nights he would have _paid for_ to be this good. True, he could do without the gun-toting bodyguard holding them prisoner, but he really did think that Patricia was as good as her word, giving them the antidote and letting them go when this was over.

He looked into Artie’s eyes. _Stick with me will be OK._

Artie just looked back, unsmiling. _Guarantee it._ Jim couldn’t quite tell if it was a question or a demand.

Either way, Jim nodded a _yes_.

He looked back at Patricia, realizing that the two of them had undoubtedly grabbed her attention.

She was watching them, not angry, but somehow fascinated.

He looked back at Artie.

And he tapped to Artie, _Will be easier for me if you can enjoy even a little. Pretend that woman in Chicago._

And thank all that was holy, Artie smiled.

Just nodded, one of his little nods, one of his “I’m humoring you, Jim” types of nods.

But he still looked sort of sad.

Jim couldn’t even pretend to enjoy something that was making Artie so melancholic. Not that Artie had to enjoy this; Jim wasn’t really enjoying it either. But something was making him feel as though this would be more bearable if it weren’t bringing Artie down with him.

Somehow he had to make this better for Artie.

Jim thought for a minute, then strode to the chalkboard, unheeding of his nudity or anything else.

Grasping the nub of chalk, he wrote:

WE’LL DO WHAT YOU WANT. JUST PUT THE GUN DOWN.

Jim turned and folded his arms across his chest, standing next to the declaration he’d written on the chalkboard, staring Patricia down. She’d seemed to have an interest in looking him in the eye. He stared right into hers.

After what seemed like hours, she nodded.

Just one nod, but it was enough.

Mauricier put the gun on the floor, kicked it toward the corner.

Jim made as if to walk over there to secure it, but Mauricier blocked him.

Spreading his hands, Jim backed up again from the giant. All right, if those were the rules, Jim would abide by them.

He nodded once to Mauricier and then returned to the couch.

For a second, he wanted to kiss Artie. Just to reassure him. Make him feel better. Make him understand that Jim was fine. That they would be fine after this was all over.

It was an odd urge, Jim thought. Surely him kissing Artie wouldn’t seem all that reassuring.

Striding around the end of the settee, Jim reached under Patricia’s arms and pulled her upright, practically tossing her into Artie’s arms. 

He didn’t hear or see her gasp, just saw Artie’s arms automatically coming up to catch her, the muscles in his tanned forearms flexing as his hands caught her around the still corseted waist.

He knew what she wanted. He’d had some of the women who had asked him for this type of attention before tell him how they liked it, the deep sensation of it that they couldn’t get any other way. He’d even had an experience or two that had shown him some of the benefits of it, himself.

He wasn’t questioning why she wanted it, just wishing it were someone else about to give it to her.

Sighing, he nudged her body forward, the press of his thighs against the back of her thighs tilting her forward into Artie’s arms.

He felt her leaning forward, felt her unbuttoning Artie’s waistcoat and shirt. He saw her push the fabric aside and start on his belt, his trouser buttons, reaching for Artie in a way that was unabashedly hungry and confident of her possession.

And it reassured him, somehow, that Artie didn’t kiss her again. Kissing seemed too personal now, in a way it hadn’t half an hour ago. Artie held her against his chest, cradling her head against his neck, and occasionally cradled one of her breasts in one of his palms, toying with the crest, making it rosier. Jim couldn’t see the touches, but he knew how it worked.

Gently, knowing that on the other side of this was freedom but also, truth be told, not wanting to bruise his masculine pride by giving her anything other than an experience she’d never forget, he stroked his fingers between her rounded cheeks to find the entrance there, and slowly, frequently returning to the jar for lubrication, working his way inside her.

He saw her shudder again, her head hanging down, curls brushing against Artie’s belly, as Jim worked a finger inside her and began to loosen her up.

He really didn’t feel as much patience as he was displaying as he stretched her with two fingers, then three. If she said anything to complain, he couldn’t hear it; he took her staying in place as sufficient good news, and figured that Artie would signal him if she looked unhappy.

Finally slicking himself up with the same stuff, grateful that getting hard was a talent that stayed with him, he managed to slide himself inside her.

He saw her head bob up, saw her hands clutching at Artie’s forearms, saw Artie holding her up for him.

He couldn’t see anything else, but again, from Artie’s face, things didn’t seem to be going that badly.

Jim refused to look at Mauricier.

After a while he felt her body loosen up, accept him. Her curls were getting more limp in the heat coming in waves off her body; he imagined her whimpers of pleasure, he couldn’t hear them.

He did see, however, her right hand come up and tap Artie in the chest.

He gave her a particularly vehement thrust. What was she bothering Artie for again?

But he knew, he’d known since she’d suggested this position. He knew what she was aiming for, and that she was going to get it.

She tapped Artie again, reached between them, and he saw Artie start, as if she had grabbed some particularly sensitive part of him. Because of course she had.

Jim frowned.

And she was pulling him toward her, pulling Artie toward her.

Artie no longer looked sad; he didn’t look happy either. If anything, he wore only his alert face, just alert as he slid lower to give Patricia what she wanted.

Jim felt a swell of rage begin somewhere in his belly, press upwards until he felt like it might force him into a shout no one would hear. No one should be taking anything else away from Artie. Jim slid his hands up behind her shoulders, thumbs just skating over the tips of her scapular bones, moving just below the skin. Artie was right, it would be easy to wrap his fingers around hers slender throat and just squeeze. Maybe to get her boyfriend to back off. Maybe just to feel it crush in his grip.

But when Artie had suggested it, Jim had said no because Mauricier had far too clean a sight line to Artie’s head and chest, and those things were still true. Even with Jim's body in the way, it was too much of a chance.

Artie was so good at fitting into whatever someone else needed him to be. Jim could feel him wriggling slightly, knowing that Patricia wanted the sensation of fullness, that that was all she wanted Artie for.

Well, she might not be paying attention to Artie at all, but Jim was.

Jim felt Artie slide into place, a hair’s breadth from where Jim's own body was stretching the woman open. He felt Artie’s girth press against him. And he felt himself throb in response. In this position, his body was oddly close to Artie’s.

It made him feel better, a little, to just forget about this difficult and inconvenient woman. It was Artie, after all, that he was worried about, so Jim just... tuned Patricia out. There was no sound to go on, after all. And it was easy to look past her hair, her shoulders, her back, to the familiar form of his friend.

Jim knew Artie’s cock, not as well as his own, but in every particular. He’d dressed enough bullet wounds and knife wounds on Artie’s body, and seen him naked in every possible situation. He knew Artie was a little longer and a little thicker than he was, and it only made sense to Jim; Artie’s body was longer and thicker in general. Jim himself had never had any complaints, so he didn’t worry about comparisons, at least not between himself and Artie, at least not about that.

It did occur to Jim that in this position, he was benefiting almost as much as Patricia was from what Artie had to offer. The pressure was incredible, and Jim felt himself get even harder in response.

He knew Patricia was appreciating what she’d got. He couldn’t hear her noises but the way she shook underneath him told him everything he could possibly need to know about the sensations she was having as she managed to get two men inside her at the same time.

But when he looked over her shoulder, he forgot to give a damn about her. He didn’t give a damn about bodyguards with guns, or his inability to hear, or anything else except Artemus Gordon.

And Artie looked like he was going to break.

Reaching around the woman between them Jim wrapped his hand around the back of Artie’s neck.

_Artie._

Artie’s eyes met his, unable to avoid the invitation of the Morse code tapped into his skin.

Jim knew he was looking a little tousled himself, with some droplets of sweat working their way down his face and his hair more than slightly disarrayed. But he just gave Artie that tiny smile, the one with the crinkles in the corners of his eyes.

 _Artie,_ Jim tapped again. _What if she had just asked nicely?_

Artie was so still for a second that Jim wondered if he’d picked the wrong thing to say. Then he saw Artie’s own eyes crinkle at the corners, and the eye-crinkle progressed to a chuckle, and then to a full-on guffaw, even though Jim couldn’t hear a thing.

Artie’s laugh was infectious, even silently. 

Jim found himself also laughing, from the gut, actually laughing till tears started to run down the corners of his eyes.

Between them Patricia was twisting, confused, trying to see both their faces without losing the parts of them she most wanted to hold on to. She was asking something, but Jim couldn’t make it out while he was laughing, and neither could Artie, he felt sure.

Jim didn’t look Mauricier’s way. The gun was out of the picture anyway. He had to relax. Artie had to relax. They could do this. They weren’t exactly doing it for American freedom, but they were doing it for their freedom, and they were almost there.

He saw Artie’s eyes meet his again, and he knew what Artie was thinking.

If she had just asked nicely. Wouldn’t they most likely have taken her up on the polite offer? Was it so different from the ladies they’d entertained in San Francisco, or St. Louis? They already knew each other well enough to be completely comfortable with each other in a situation like this. There was no one Jim would trust to see him through a situation of naked vulnerability like Artemus Gordon. And he knew Artie felt the same way.

He was managing to stop the tears but he could still feel himself chuckling. Oh, if she had only asked nicely.

He nodded to Artie and lifted Patricia up in his arms, almost to a standing position, then stepped forward between Artie’s own spread legs. He dropped her back down, spearing her on Artie, and bent his own knees deeply enough that he could thrust into her from behind.

It was a tremendous exertion, and he felt the sweat popping out again on his forehead, but he could do this. He would have done this, if she had just asked nicely. He would have done this for her, and happily for Artie.

He could feel Patricia moaning between them, but his hands moved past her to grab on to Artie’s shirt, pulling the three of them closer.

Artie nodded, and then made a dropping of the chin motion, one, two, three.

On _three_ he scooted farther down the settee, laying himself out nearly flat so that Patricia was spread out between the two of them and Jim had a much more comfortable entry angle. Jim could hold himself up along the back of the settee and thrust for all he was worth, and Artie timed his thrusts so that they entered together and withdrew together.

Patricia might be shouting now, but she didn’t look unhappy, and her hands, one spreading across Artie’s wide chest and the other reaching back to grab Jim around the thigh, didn’t seem to be putting them off either. So Jim kept going.

Artie wiggled down just a few inches more, and tapped on the arm Jim was bracing himself with. _Come on down._

Jim questioned his judgement for a moment - he was compact, but he wasn’t light, and Artie would have to bear the weight of both Patricia and himself. But looking over the woman’s shoulder, he could see Artie just nod.

So Jim maneuvered forward again, realizing as he did so what Artie was aiming for. In this position Patricia was lying nearly flat on Artie, and Jim could just kneel between Artie’s knees.

Perfect.

Just a few more thrusts at that angle and he could feel Patricia spasming under him. She threw her head back, almost managing to clock him in the jaw, and Jim felt sure that anyone around who could hear would be being treated to quite an earful right about now. Mauricier was probably riveted.

He looked back at his partner.

Artie, previously the least affected of the three, was sweating now too, and before he stopped himself Jim sank the fingers of his free hand into Artie’s curls, tugging them gently away from his scalp. Artie smiled at that, a sweet, thankful little smile, and he looked so boyish in that second that Jim forgot where there were or what - or who - they were doing.

He slid his hand down between Artie’s collar and his throat, resting his thumb in the hollow there formed by Artie’s straining muscles.

And he thought: the hell with making this good for Patricia. He ought to make this good for Artie.

He could feel Artie pulling out, and this time instead of going with him Jim pushed down, and pushed in.

He felt Patricia’s moan vibrate in her back where she lay against him, but under his thumb he felt Artie’s moan vibrate in the base of the man’s throat. He knew it would sound guttural and deep, if he could only hear it.

Concentrating on feeling that again, Jim did it again, earning another deep vibration against the pad of his thumb, something he knew he could trust.

Over and over he pressed back down into Patricia and opposite Artie’s thrust, maximizing the pressure and friction, not on her, but on his friend.

Unheeded, between them, he felt Patricia’s muscles lock as she came again, this time her head falling against Artie’s chest. Jim left her there, panting like a racehorse. When concentrating, he couldn’t be shaken, and right now he was concentrating on the sounds Artie was making even though he couldn’t hear them. In his head, he could imagine them perfectly. He’d heard Artie make every kind of sound, and could recognize his voice behind every accent, in every character. He knew Artie’s voice like he knew his own, and he could feel it in his fingertips, and he wasn’t letting go of it now.

Artie’s eyes had glazed over too and he was thrusting, following Jim's lead perfectly as always. 

Somehow between them Patricia seemed to gather some strength. Her hands were shaking, but she used them to push herself upright from where she had fallen across Artie’s body. Jim registered her only as something in his way.

Somehow she managed to maneuver herself up on to her own knees, slid away from both of them, and somehow stepped over Artie’s spread knees, disengaging from between them in the same deft maneuver. Jim could see she was panting, sweat dripping down her throat to her collarbone, and her hands and her knees were both shaking, but she managed.

It was startling for Jim, as he’d nearly forgotten she was there.

Using Artie’s knee for balance Patricia deftly plucked what Jim could now see was a damp towel from the platter on the floor, the one next to where Jim had dropped the small jar of lubricant. She reached between them both and grabbed Jim, wiping him off from base to tip and cleaning him off.

Which was appreciable, thought Jim, perhaps even neighborly, but right now...

Dipping her finger in the grease pot again Patricia once again lubricated his cock, twisting her fingers around the tip in a way that made Jim want to growl out loud. It was an intense, focused sensation, one almost too intense to be anything other than painful, and it made him go from slightly flagging at the absence of stimulation to rock-hard again in an instant.

And then Patricia was standing next to him, pressing on the small of his back, pressing him down _against Artie_ , who was still hard and reflexively thrusting into space where a woman had been just seconds ago, Artie with his head thrown back and his Adam’s apple bobbing a bit where he swallowed, Artie with his eyes rolled up in his head from the pleasure that...

... that Jim had been giving him.

Without another thought Jim slotted himself down between Artie’s spread knees, replacing his hand on Artie’s throat, his thumb on Artie’s collarbone, and thrust his now slick cock firmly against Artie’s where it lay against Artie’s skin.

The groan Artie let out was something spectacular, even just going by the feel of it. Jim could feel him arch his back up off the couch and into Jim's body, feeling their cocks expand against each other, both of them feeling to Jim like forged hot iron rods, almost burning his skin with pleasure.

It was more than electric, it was an explosive shock like lightning, and Jim settled into the same rhythm of thrusting, and without anyone between them the sensation bounced around between his brain and his balls and the base of his spine till he thought maybe he would go mad from the pleasure, maybe that had been her evil plan all along.

Except how could anyone have known that this would feel like this?

Patricia disappeared somewhere, Jim didn’t know where, and he didn’t care. He curved his body protectively over Artie’s, the hand in Artie’s collar curling around the back of his neck to pull him closer, feeling the muscles in Artie’s stomach and hips and thighs flexing and pressing against him, and it pulled _all_ his attention, _all_ tightly focused on Artie. Soldier that he had been, a bomb could have gone off right next to him right now and he would stay right where he was, curled over Artie.

He leaned forward and kissed Artie, once, gently, on the lips.

Artie’s eyes flew open and looked back into Jim's. It was as though Artie had just remembered where he was and suddenly realized what he was doing. He looked surprised for the tiniest fraction of a second, then Jim's body dug into his again and he moaned. He wound his arms around Jim's chest, pulling at Jim with a strength Jim knew very well, and his lips were moving against Jim's ear. 

Even less inclined to show anyone else what was happening between the two of them, Jim lowered him even farther down on the sofa, pressing him flat into the red cushions. He felt Artie throb right against his own core, and it was the most exciting thing he could remember ever having felt - more exciting than cliff diving or dodging bullets or jumping on to a speeding train.

Artie’s lips were moving against Jim's ear, and Jim wished he could hear whatever Artie was saying.

Groaning himself almost as if he’d been shot, Jim ground himself down against Artie’s pelvic bone, the curves of soft flesh at the top and below where his balls were drawn up tight and hard somehow not so different from a woman’s and yet at the same time very, very different.

Jim felt a drop of sweat fall from his own forehead on to Artie’s cheek, and he wanted to swipe it away, it looked like a tear, but Artie didn’t look sad any more so maybe it didn’t matter. Artie was looking at him, straight at him, from just about an inch away, and Artie didn’t look sad, in fact he looked exultant, that was the only word Jim had for it, like he perhaps had just discovered he might fly.

And Jim mouthed at him, _Come, Artie, just come. I’ve got you._

Artie’s eyes widened in surprise again and Jim could _feel_ the groan that ground away deep in his chest, deep in his throat as he came harder than Jim had ever imagined a man could come.

And then the extraordinary shock of it, feeling Artie explode against the hot skin of his own low belly and the hot spurt that went with it, feeling the animal growl of Artie’s voice in his throat even though Jim couldn’t hear it, that pushed Jim over the edge himself and he came, collapsing onto Artie below him, fighting for breath.

Jim's arms gripped Artie’s body spasmodically, tight, tighter than he would ever grip a woman, and weakly Artie’s arms unwound from their death grip on Jim's chest, stroking the back of his neck, threading fingers through his dark hair and cradling the back of his head.

Artie continued to murmur something against Jim's ear and it didn’t matter what it was.

Jim had never felt so inclined to sleep afterwards before, but he forced himself to open his eyes and lean up, grimacing slightly as his and Artie’s bodies pulled away from each other in a bit of a sticky mess.

Across the room he could see Patricia’s feet and that was all, as she appeared to be taking advantage of the plush carpets to lie on the floor, and Mauricier was giving her yet more of his very interested, very personal attention. Jim couldn’t hear any of the noises they were making, but that, he thought to himself, might actually be for the best.

Leaning up farther he grabbed another towel from the tray and wiped himself off, batted away Artie’s hands to wipe Artie off, too. They needed to get back to the hotel in these clothes, after all, and no matter what they could say or not say, they looked - and smelled - like they’d been doing exactly what they’d been doing.

Jim swung to his feet and offered Artie a hand.

The older man swung his arms up and out, celebrating his freedom to move and regaining his equilibrium.

And as they both began to rearrange their clothes, both of them noticed that Patricia had written a new message on the chalkboard.

Jim froze, did not look at Artie, and picked up the rag. He wiped off the entire board, edge to edge, his arm swings wide and forceful.

He wrote on the board YOU COULD HAVE JUST ASKED NICELY.

They left no sign in the room of Patricia’s final silent note:

_The serum wears off in just a few hours. Friction with the air will remove the serum from your eardrums, and drink will also help wash it from your throat. You will be unhurt._

And then below that, also in her handwriting, had been an added message.

_Do you two even know that you’re in love?_

###

It seemed imperative, first of all, to get out of that room.

As soon as they cleared the door, standing in the tiny hallway, Jim took a deep breath of air that, if it wasn’t fresh, at least didn’t smell of sex and tuberose the way that room had smelled.

Artie knew how he felt. It might have been a fairly comfortable prison, but it had been prison all the same.

He watched as Jim knelt down and put his hand on the floor.

Vibrations, Artie realized. The serum might have made them temporarily deaf, but it might still be possible to feel someone’s footsteps on the floor \- or the click of a dog’s nails.

The latter would explain why Jim was walking slowly, very slowly forward, in a crouch so low as to be almost on the floor.

A few steps away he was on the floor, his fingers curled under his hands as he reached one forward.

And then in the gloam Artie could see the outline of a big dog, with thick standing fur not unlike Jim's hair, bigger than he’d expected, coming toward Jim and sniffing Jim's hand on the floor.

Jim scratched it behind the ear.

When he beckoned to Artie, Artie followed along behind, tucking in his shirt and trying to smooth his sweat-soaked curls backwards from his face. He cringed, having to shove his way down the tiny hallway and wedge his way between the dog and the wall, but the dog made no move to stop them, its solid warmth wiggling, another enemy hypnotized by Jim West.

The door on the left, they both knew, led to the saloon. They couldn’t go out that way. But if they kept following the hall, they might end up who knew where - and they wouldn’t hear if someone was waiting ahead of them.

So again, when they’d gone around a twisty little corner, up three stairs, down five, and off to the right, Jim approached the door slowly, almost walking on hands and knees, and knelt in front of hit, flattening his hands on the floor just before the crack in the light that showed underneath it.

Artie crept up behind him in a way that he hoped was silent, and laid a hand on Jim’s shoulder. _Clear?_ he tapped.

Jim nodded, once, just a little. He didn’t look super confident, but they would have to break through somewhere.

Artie shoved up beside him in the tiny hallway. There wasn’t much point to personal boundaries after a night like this anyway...

Quick as a flash, Jim thrust open the door, shoving himself through it before Artie could do it - always insisting on being the first one in the firing line.

Fortunately... it was a broom closet.

Jim held up a finger to his lips, which struck Artie as nearly laugh-worthy ironic, given that they were unable to make a sound even if they wanted to. But he knew what Jim meant. They had to try hard not to make a sound, because they wouldn’t hear it if they did.

Immediately Artie wished he’d captured a sample of the serum. If he could rub it on the soles of their shoes ... That must have been what the woman had done, to get past him in the alleyway, letting both the darkness and the silence hide her. What a breakthrough it really must have been. If he could get them back to the Wanderer, he would have to try to take samples from both of them before it was all worn away. What a discovery!

In the dark in the broom closet, the only light a very faint gleam from a high-up window that was letting in a sliver of moonlight, he stopped and grabbed Jim's hand. When Jim's eyes turned toward him, Artie could have sworn they gave off a light of their own.

He tapped into Jim's palm. _What happened to mayor?_

Jim tapped back unhesitatingly. _Mayor owes Patricia much money._

Patricia? That must be the woman’s name. Trust Jim to have caught the name of the woman who’d made them...

Artie tried to shake it off. Jim was still tapping: _He buys brothel time for all town bigwigs. They keep him in office. But she doesn’t like doing business with him. And he knows it._

Artie digested this. _What if he decides he wants out of their arrangement?_

Jim nodded a little. He was thinking the same thing. Ellis and Miss McKenzie didn’t seem to have parted on the best terms. She wouldn’t likely be expecting his return tonight. So if he rounded up a few men he could trust... And he knew just where to find her...

They didn’t have to discuss it. Jim knew what Artie was thinking, even though they could barely see each other in the near-total dark.

They didn’t owe her a rescue. She had used them unforgivably. She was a willing participant in a plot to subvert the local government, and hadn’t cared what laws she broke along the way.

But both of them knew the other one was also thinking that as human beings go, somehow they had more sympathy for Patricia McKenzie than they had for Alan Ellis. Stupid of them, perhaps, but it was how their minds worked.

Neither of them wanted to see the woman murdered just to give Ellis free reign over this town.

 _Although_ , Artie did tap into Jim's palm, _I wouldn’t mind seeing that big man get some slapping around._

Jim's teeth flashed white in the dark and Artie felt better, just knowing Jim was still smiling. There was a part of him, a very tiny part, that would have been happy just to sit in this broom closet till morning, then ride the train out of here.

But that wasn’t either one of them, not at all.

There remained the problem of how they would defend the brothel madam from the mayor, given that he controlled the law enforcement in this town and they couldn’t tell anyone anything out loud. No time to get back to the train to wire for reinforcements from federal troops.

_We need help._

Jim nodded at Artie’s Morse-code summary of the case at hand.

 _Brothel_ , Jim tapped back.

###

Jim led the way out of the building and behind the big row of buildings that fronted on to Main Street.

Artie retrieved his gun belt from the nook behind the hotel where a Swedish waiter had hidden it.

Silently.

They found their way by walking along the train tracks to what Patricia had described to Jim as “the other side” of the little town, and finding a house that, despite the hour, had light showing in all the windows. 

While walking, no one noticed that the two men said nothing to each other.

The silence was only a problem, in fact, when they reached their destination.

“Hi honey, come on in,” said the girl who opened the door. Her false smile and even more false bosom grated on Jim, as did the fact that she was probably just barely sixteen years old. 

But whether or not she had age or enthusiasm, she knew the house rules and she intended to enforce them.

“What’re you looking for tonight, honey?” said the girl, giving Jim a slow appraising look. “My name’s Buttercup, by the way, in case you’re interested in some company.”

Jim grimaced, pointed to his throat, and tried to make clear with expressions of regret that he was sorry, but he couldn’t talk.

Buttercup wasn’t dismayed. She turned to Artemus. “What about you, honey, is this trip for you?”

When Artie also gave a sheepish grin and shrugged, pointing to his throat, Buttercup began to look suspicious. Two gentlemen with laryngitis were suspect. And the bouncer wasn’t available right now.

“Look, you guys gotta...”

Looking around Jim saw a ledger in the corner. He immediately stepped to it and began writing in the margins.

“Hey!” Two other young ladies dashed over to Buttercup’s side but Buttercup was already entranced by watching Jim’s pen scratch along the paper in telegraphic words: _Miss McKenzie in trouble. Need your help._

“Well we can help Miss McKenzie...”

“If she’s really in trouble...”

“Say, what’s your name?”

They couldn’t follow the competing speeches but the last girl tapped on Jim's chest, emphasizing her question. “I’m Mallory. What’s your name.”

Jim wrote in the margin. _Jim West. Secret Service Agent._

The girls made ooh-ing and and ah-ing noises, which were funnier to Artie because he could only see them, not hear them. The girls clustered closer around his partner, and Artie just shook his head. Jim could attract women in droves anywhere, and here they were in a brothel in the middle of the night. This was the damndest case.

Jim looked around, scratched out, _Anyone else?_

Buttercup nodded, held up four fingers. “There’s four more girls upstairs who can come down as soon as they’re finished.” 

She looked like she was shouting the information. Well, that would help. It was fine; her clear, slow enunciation made it easier for them to read her lips.

Great, Artie and Jim said to each other with their eyes. As soon as the folks upstairs were finished, they had seven helpers.

###

Jim finally ended up tearing a handful of pages out of the back of the ledger and Buttercup scared up a pencil. The two men wrote back and forth furiously, with the women clustering over their shoulder and reading what they wrote.

It was fortunate that they didn’t have voices at the moment, Artie thought; they might have given away their _extremely_ mixed feelings about helping the madam.

Jim and Artie conveyed the basics to the girls: If the mayor went back to the saloon with the twisted, silent hallway to get rid of Patricia McKenzie, he probably wouldn’t go alone. He’d seen Mauricier and, though only one man, he was large and intimidating; Mayor Ellis wouldn’t face him alone.

The mayor might also be involving the sheriff in this business.

Their best weapon, they decided, was their only weapon: the ladies of the house.

“Us?” Buttercup looked both delighted and horrified to find out that she and her colleagues were the crucial parts to a rescue plan. “But what can we do?”

Jim just looked at Artie.

Artie held up a finger, as if to say, “I’ve got this one, James my boy.”

Tearing off a slip of paper, he wrote a big E on it and slipped in into Jim's breast pocket. Bemused, Jim let Artie push him into the middle of the room.

Moving around him, Artie managed to convey the sense of a half-dozen men with the major, by standing and adopting the entire physical presence of someone else, taking two steps and doing it again. A sullen older man; a tall gangly youth; a square-jawed cowboy; these and more Artie managed to evoke with nothing more than his ability to move his body and his face.

If Jim's eyes twinkled a little, watching Artie using this little living room in a brothel to demonstrate his extraordinary acting skills, no one noticed.

Then Artie went back to the spot where he’d first been the sullen older man, and immediately re-adopted the stance. Jim doubted the women understood what a talent they were seeing.

Taking a step to the left, Artie looked at “himself”, the spot where he’d just stood. Visibly he shrank an inch or two, became somehow narrower, softer. His big brown eyes batted at “himself” and he fluttered his fingers. He walked away, looking back over his shoulder.

Then re-occupying the space of the sullen man, Artie looked at Jim, wearing the “E” for Ellis, then looked at the girl he’d just been pretending to be walking away, then stomped after the girl.

The plan was clear as crystal.

By the end of Artie’s “explanation” of the plan, all the women were clapping for him, and three of them had migrated over to his side away from his partner’s.

Jim wondered if he was supposed to feel jealous, and if so of whom -- or was he supposed to feel guilty for doing his friend out of an evening in a friendly whorehouse?

As with many of life’s tougher conundrums, Jim left those questions alone and went on with his business.

###

By the time they made their way back to the saloon, it was truly late, perhaps an hour, not more than two, until dawn.

Jim had passed the need for sleep a while ago and Artie, he knew, could stay awake for a dawn raid as long as he could fall asleep like the dead the day after. The ladies of the evening were admirably awake; this was the middle of the workday for them.

Jim positioned them strategically along the route he felt the sheriff would have to take. He only had one shot at this to work, and no other options for bettering his odds.

As the last drunk rolled off the sidewalk to sleep peacefully by its side, and the night breeze blew away the last of the town’s miasma of smoke from the day’s candles and cooking fires, the stocky little mayor did indeed come marching right down the middle of town, nose twitching with importance and caressing the handles of both his guns. He looked like he was going to storm a castle, not murder a madam.

A loose crew of gentlemen followed him, and as the agents had suspected, they were young and old, all fairly well dressed, and none looked particularly enthusiastic.

Perfect.

“Pssst!”

Jim couldn’t hear Mallory’s hiss, but he bet most of the other men couldn’t either, because they went on about their business without noticing the young man in the rear who startled like a frightened horse, looking around him in the dim moonlight till he spotted the girl peeping out at him and wiggling her fingers at him from around the corner of the blacksmith’s Main Street building.

Good job, Jim thought to himself as the girl held a quick whispered conversation with the young man, then led him off around the back of that building.

Whether she took him back to the brothel or had sex with him in the street, one thing was for sure: she wasn’t going to let that man out of her sight for anything.

Similarly, over the next two blocks, the tall man in his fifties with a handlebar mustache suddenly dropped away, for no reason an observer would note unless they also noticed the young lady in a pink petticoat and nearly nothing else waving from behind the pillar in front of the general store.

And another, and another.

Six men dropped out of the sheriff’s posse without him ever noticing, charging as he was in his own imagination down a city thoroughfare to a castle that needed storming.

By the time he reached the alleyway to the twisty side hall of the saloon, he had only three friends with him.

“What in tarnation!”

Jim could see him yelling, but of course didn’t know what he was yelling. Not that it mattered.

Jim slipped inside another door, heading back through the broom closet.

###

“I believe you, Artie, but if the sheriff kills me, his political hold on this town is over.”

Artie caught most of the words; he shrugged. He was disinclined to humor Patricia McKenzie, even happily exhausted and tousled as she was. Mauricier was struggling into his pants behind her, discouraging Artie further; the man was truly hung like a horse.

When both Mauricier and Patricia startled, Artie realized that they could hear something he couldn’t: most likely the sheriff’s approach.

Keeping his back to the wall, Artie had his own pistol drawn and trained at the door before the sheriff even entered. Just a few seconds later, Mauricier had the same.

The sheriff balked, two guns trained on him before he even entered the room.

Behind him his compatriots squawked. “Go in or don’t, Ellis, but I ain’t standing out here in the hallway!”

Artemus didn’t hear the complaint but saw the sheepish group of men crowding in through the door, facing down a thoroughly unimpressed madam and two undaunted fellows with guns. This caused yet more discussion Artie couldn’t hear but which didn’t seem to be going well for Ellis.

By the time Ellis or his colleagues decided on retreat,

There was Jim,

standing in the door

gun in one hand

and the other on the neck of an extremely large, extremely silent dog. 

###

If they hadn’t been in such a hurry, and if they had had their voices to work with, the agents would have stopped in at the jail first.

As it was, they had to make that the last stop, and it wasn’t a popularity-gaining conversation.

Both agents just stood there while the deputy, a skinny young man just shy of thirty and none too decisive-looking, gaped, and the bevy of young women from the brothel explained the whole sordid story in a way that not even Artemus would have attempted to reproduce.

Artie would have forgiven the young man for brushing it all off as some sort of episode, except there were the two federal agents standing right behind the women, one with his arm on the shoulder of the handcuffed mayor, both with identification, and neither one saying a word.

There wasn’t much to it but let the fellow work out the details for himself, with the girls putting in details here or there or anywhere. Artie felt himself almost swaying on his feet. It made him determined to stay upright, though, when he looked at Jim, still implacably standing in the jail, waiting for the deputy to understand that the mayor was under arrest and that it was the deputy’s job to hold him in the cell till federal marshals arrived.

Even if the sheriff arrived to do something about the situation.

The sheriff had been part of the original gang heading for the saloon and a nasty end for Miss McKenzie, Artie was sure of it. He was also sure that the head lawman had peeled off the posse when Miss Maybelle of McKenzie’s establishment had wiggled her fingers at him from a doorway down by the general store. He had no intention of letting the man release Ellis and leg it for the hills.

There was no paper to hand in the jail, so Artemus just had to let the women explain the whole situation and let the deputy figure out what was best for him to do.

He and Jim, however, would not be releasing their quarry solely into the deputy’s care.

Jim rested a hand on his shoulder, tapped into the side of his neck, _Wanderer. I’ll send for backup. Stay?_

Artie just nodded. Jim knew his limits, knew Artemus was nearly out on his feet, but he also knew Artie could well stand armed guard over this little jail and make sure everything stayed as it was while Jim made the fastest trip he could to the Wanderer and back.

When Jim strode out the door, the deputy, in the middle of a bevy of talkative young women, didn’t look like he was getting the story sorted out any time real soon.

###

Artie looked a little surprised when Jim got back. Jim _had_ moved as quickly as he could. It was nearly dawn, and the messengers said it would be two hours before the marshals could get there. Jim resolved to stay put until they arrived.

The deputy didn’t appear to have a favorite girl in the bunch -- maybe he didn’t care for feminine company, thought Jim, or maybe some town girl out there had his heart. But even so, Jim wasn’t inclined to leave this whole situation in that man’s hands. Jim had no intention of tracking Ellis down twice. The stocky older man had gone from looking nearly apoplectic to looking fairly calm, and Jim had another suspicion, that Ellis had a friend or two out there and a plan for getting out of town quick if things all went haywire for him. Well, they had all just gone haywire for him, and if he were going to activate his own emergency plans, he’d do it now.

Just looking at Ellis made Jim feel a little tired, though he had no intention of showing it. He was a petty man in a petty game, and the fact that he took himself so seriously when all he really had was criminal intentions and the money to buy an unwilling partner, just filled Jim with irritation. Jim believed in democracy, and Alan Ellis’ whole existence was a thumbing of the nose to the idea of democracy. For a wild second Jim wished he had simply chased Ellis down and “accidentally” killed him in the scuffle. But that thought too left an unwelcome taste in his mouth; he didn’t like rogue lawmen, and he had no intention of becoming one.

And he knew for a fact Artie wouldn’t like it.

###

They sat there, silent, keeping watch on the sullen mayor in his tiny jail cell and watching the deputy watch the mayor too. Most of the women trailed away and went home as the sun came up; Jim figured it was probably their bedtime. One, Mallory, stuck around and stared at the sullen mayor the whole time too, her eyes filled with as much anger and suspicion as any guard dog. It looked to Jim as if Mallory had had some experience with the mayor that was the reason Patricia McKenzie refused him business at her place. He finally was able to relax a little, knowing that if the sheriff returned and tried to give the deputy any hassle about holding the mayor, Mallory, at least, would raise a very visible and audible ruckus.

Unable to talk, poor Artie really looked like he’d gone past his last legs. They had no cards, couldn’t sleep, couldn’t leave, and Artie couldn’t even regale them with stories of guard watches he’d done in the past.

Jim looked at the bags under Artie’s eyes.

Snapping his fingers, he got both the deputy’s and Mallory’s attention.

He pointed at his friend and mimed drinking, saying as clearly as he could, _Water_.

He hoped they didn’t bring them a bottle of gin, but if they did, he’d drink anything to get this stuff out of his throat and be able to talk again.

Following the thought, Artie jumped up and intercepted Mallory. He was shaking his head up and down as he said _Yes, gin_.

 _Dammit Artie,_ thought Jim to himself, but he left it alone.

When Mallory returned with both, Jim considered kissing her.

He was surprised, though, that Artie didn’t swig any of the gin. His partner wasn’t fussy; he suddenly couldn’t drink unless it was out of a glass?

He was still confused when Artie approached him and, gently, put his fingers on the side of Jim's head, pushing it until he was leaning sideways with his ear up.

But he managed to figure it out just a second before Artie poured the tiniest dollop of the gin straight into his earhole.

Jim shook his head a little to swish it around, then flipped it over to let it drain out like he’d just been swimming.

Artie steadied him with a hand on his shoulder and said to him, “How’s that feel, Jim?”

And gloriously, he could hear Artie’s voice, soft as if it were far, far away, but undeniably Artie’s voice.

“Better. Thanks, Artie,” said Jim with his typical brevity, figuring Artie would probably know everything he didn’t say. Artie always did.

###

By the time the marshals arrived and took over, Artie was practically staggering. But Jim could hear him say “Wanderer.” And he wasn’t going to argue. They both needed some sleep, and they’d clean up all the rest of this mess later.

Jim would make sure of that too.

###

Artemus Gordon awoke in his bunk on the Wanderer, surrounded by familiar sights and smells and yes, faintly, sounds, and for a moment he felt misplaced in life, had to think about why he was here, what had happened and why the sound of himself moving in bed seemed so faint and far away.

But it all clicked into place in a moment.

Closing his eyes, Artie wondered if it might just be easier to go back to sleep than to figure out what happened next.

Arresting the mayor and straightening out the law in this town was a small task next to negotiating the path lined with explosive traps that seemed to lay in front of him, given the night he and Jim had had.

What was he supposed to do? What should he say? He had no prior experiences to guide him here, and anyway, he wasn’t sure that other situations applied to Jim West. What precisely made the man tick was never exactly apparent.

There weren’t Army manuals for situations like the one they’d faced the night before. That was all Artie knew for sure.

Rolling over, wondering if it would help or hurt his situation to simply pretend to sleep through the day, Artie heard a dry rustle under his head. After so long hearing nothing, it grabbed his attention like a ringing bell.

He thrust his hand under the pillow and pulled out a scrap of paper, the one torn off the edge of one of the ledger pages they were using to write on last night at the brothel, the one bearing the large E he’s written and tucked in Jim's breast pocket. In Jim's handwriting, on the other side of the slip of paper were two words:

 _I knew_.

Something exploded low in Artie’s gut, some combination of fear and elation and excitement and dread and delight. He felt like a teenager for a second. He couldn’t stop his grin. Then it hit him.

My God. Really, _my God_. For his uncommunicative, laconic partner to actually write down those words, and leave them where Artie would undoubtedly find them? From one point of view it was no risk, as no one else would know to what they referred; but from another point of view it was an enormous risk, to Jim's pride, and maybe to his heart.

Because Artie knew exactly what question Jim was answering.

_Do you two even know that you’re in love?_

Artie stared at the paper in his hand, looked around and around his compartment as if the answer to these new mysteries in the universe would be written somewhere on the walls.

Jim had been in love with him. For some time. He’d _known_. 

How did Artie not know? What did he know for sure now? He scrubbed a hand through his hair, looking down again at the paper in his hands.

_I knew._

Artie looked out the window. 

###

Staggering out of the sleeping car, Artemus felt in dire need of a long bath, a shave, a bottle of bourbon, and perhaps another ten hours’ sleep.

Jim, on the other hand, looked perfectly put together, even though Artie knew damn well Jim was in at least as dire a need of two of those things. Perhaps three.

Something about the tilt of his partner’s neck, some sort of tension in the back of his hands, told Artie that he didn’t have time to play around on this one. He’d better come straight to the point.

“I didn’t know, Jim.”

He saw Jim straighten, face still turned away, and his shoulders pull up as if pushing a heavy weight, and he immediately rushed to say more.

“Actually I didn’t know till just now.”

Jim still didn’t look at him. “Artie, you don’t have to feel anything -- you don’t have to do anything -- just because I --”

“Jim.”

Artie moved closer, so his soft voice would carry and also so that those brilliant eyes would have to look up and see him. See what he was saying with his own eyes.

“Just now, when I was wondering what to say, before I came in here, I looked out the window. And I saw that little stand of scrub trees over there.” Artie pointed, and Jim could see them too, gray-green foliage lightly waving in the breeze, sunlight painting them nearly white. “And while I was just...staring at them, I realized that I’ve been in love with you for a long time. I just hadn’t noticed.”

What had really hit Artie, looking at that little stand of trees, was that someday he would die. He was a grown man in a dangerous job; his time would come. And he knew, all of a sudden, that whether he’d pictured retiring to a little farmhouse or living in a big city hotel, what really mattered was whether or not Jim West was there. He knew that it was more likely that he’d die out here, on the job they both loved, and he’d probably be buried under a little stand of trees like that one. And he knew that when it came time to go, he wouldn’t regret the stages he never played or the women he’d never had or the money he’d never spent or the fame he’d never get. He’d regret leaving Jim West.

Looking forward at the time between now and that little stand of trees, he didn’t want some unknown woman to wash his socks or make him eggs. He didn’t even want some beautiful actress to take him on tour and get him on the stage he’d always thought he loved more than anything. What he wanted was to do some good, if he could, by the side of Jim West. 

And if he couldn’t, he still wanted to be by Jim's side.

If that wasn’t love, he didn’t know what was.

“Wherever you go, I go, and I just didn’t realize it’s because I love you, Jim. But, amazingly enough, I do.”

Jim was looking right at him. He knew Artie meant what he said.

Gingerly Jim put down the egg he had just picked up as though he might cook breakfast. There was so much tension coiled in his body, in his hands, that Artie was surprised the egg didn’t shatter in mid-air. “I’m not asking you for anything, Artemus.”

Artie just spread his hands wide, palms up, as though offering a big bowl of agreement. “All right.”

“Nothing has to change.”

“Okay.”

“We never have to talk about this again.”

Artie scratched the back of his neck, looking doubtful. “Well, I might have a problem with that. Because you know me, Jim, once I get a topic in mind, it can be hard for me to leave it alone until I’ve really studied it. And like I said, this is a new one on me.”

At that Jim cocked his head a little to one side, wearing a questioning half-grimace. “You want to talk about it?”

Oh, his poor Jim. This was really torture for him. Again, Artie couldn’t imagine the fortitude and determination of the man, writing that note and leaving it where he _knew_ Artie would find it.

“Meaning you don’t want to talk about it, I understand,” said Artie, trying to sound magnanimous as he walked over to the side bench and plopped himself down, “but then, we could work out right now what might or might not be different in a world where we _both_ have this earth-shattering new information, and _then_ we never have to talk about it again, if that’s what you want.”

Artie expected Jim to try to put off the topic till later, but Jim really had the bit between his teeth this morning and he wouldn’t be stopped. He looked gracefully relaxed, standing next to the table with his shoulders tilting in and his hips cocked to one side, but Artie could see the tension in him as sure as if he were a pulled bowstring.

And he looked so vulnerable, and so beautiful, that Artie felt his heart swelling in his chest. How had he missed the fact that he loved the man?

To be fair, the topic of loving a man had never come up in his life before. But he’d been around the theater, he’d seen a lot of different ways people lived. It wasn’t as though he hadn’t known about the _possibility_. It was just as though the reality of loving Jim West had simply started existing, like the sun coming up in the west, and it had felt so natural and so necessary that Artie had incorporated it into his every day life, no more remarkable than breathing.

Jim's expression hadn’t changed but something about the mouth told Artie that Jim was preparing to act a bit mulish. “Nothing has to change,” he said again.

“Does that mean you don’t _want_ anything to change?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Could you perhaps give me a very small hint as to changes you might be willing to entertain?”

“Artie.” Now Jim was outright glaring at him. “ _I knew.”_

“But I didn’t,” Artie told him, his whole face softening, completely given up to showing Jim exactly how emotional Artie was feeling at this moment. “I _apologize_. So now that I’m here. What, exactly, might be different, in this weird little world you and I inhabit?”

Jim looked up at the ceiling, contemplating. He shrugged, then looked back at Artie and said, “I really think just sex, Artie.”

Artie was glad he wasn’t eating or drinking anything. He would have spit it across the room. He just restrained himself from coughing reflexively; it felt like he was choking on his own breath. “Just sex. Do tell.”

Trust Jim to go right to the heart of it. There were miles, Artie felt, between his new realization about how he felt, and the raw sensation his body and Jim's had been through last night. But trust Jim to draw the shortest possible line.

“We spend most of our time together anyway; we work together. I don’t need anything else from you that you don’t already give me.” At that Artie couldn’t help but grin. When Jim went for it, he went for it. He was so open, so _clear_. “What else _would_ change?”

“It doesn’t seem... awkward to you, suggesting that we, you and I, have sexual relations with one another?”

Jim was looking at him thoughtfully now. “Does it seem awkward to you?”

Artie felt himself swallow, forced himself not to start waving his hands, he felt so at sixes and sevens with this whole question. “What’s awkward is that it doesn’t feel more awkward.”

Jim eyes dipped -- as if he were hiding a triumphant smile, Artie realized. The smug bastard. “It didn’t feel awkward last night, except for the awkward circumstances.”

“That damn woman,” Artie couldn’t help bursting out. “She --”

But he couldn’t figure out how to finish the sentence. For some reason as more time went on he was getting angrier with that woman, not less. He hadn’t liked how she’d forced Jim, and he resented her forcing him. But she was so much less important than his partner. She had been the awkward part, but without her he wouldn’t have ended up thrusting himself against Jim's naked body -- and that, oddly, he resented the most. He resented her seeing that private moment. Otherwise he barely remembered the woman; he remembered Jim’s eyes looking into his.

Artie looked up. There were Jim’s eyes again, still with him, and with something new in their expression that Artie couldn’t quite read.

Jim said, “Last night was a number of things all tumbled up together. The basic truth is... much simpler.”

In the same quiet voice Jim said, “I’d like to make love to you, Artie. Just us. Just you.”

Artie couldn’t swallow now, around the lump in his throat. “Just... me. _Just_ me?”

If Jim's voice got any quieter, it would be a whisper. “Just you.”

Artie had to clear his throat. He still sounded hoarse when he said, “So... just to be clear, are you saying that you’d be willing to give up feminine company? That you’d actually prefer mine?”

Jim shrugged. It was amazing to see him shrug off the river of hot and cold running women that constantly flowed toward Jim West, but he did. It really didn’t seem to matter to him.

Artie pressed, “So easily?”

“They’re not usually as interesting as they look. And they’re never as interesting as you.”

“Jim, you are a veritable cornucopia of compliments this morning.” He looked out at the height of the sun. “Or, I guess, this afternoon.” 

He filed Jim’s little declaration in his heart, right next to the note he’d found that morning. He was being positively _courted_.

“Besides,” Jim went on, “you’ve never been the jealous type, Artie, and if I felt really desperately in need of something you couldn’t give me, I bet you’d give me a pass. Or perhaps come along for the evening.” Now Jim's body uncoiled and he was reaching for his gunbelt on the table, getting ready, perhaps, to go out. This conversation must really be killing him, Artie thought again.

“Like last night?”

Jim shrugged again. “The best part of last night was you.”

Now Artie folded his arms, looking up in astonishment at his partner. “And am I to assume that if I felt the need for feminine companionship, I’d be the lucky recipient of the same offer?”

“Fair’s fair, Artie.” But Artie saw the muscle in Jim's jaw flex, and Jim froze, just for a fraction of a second, in the motion of swinging the gunbelt around his hips. His impossibly thick, dark eyelashes lay against his cheek and he looked down and said, “If you find your attention caught by...a pretty face..”

“Ah James my boy,” and Artie swiftly launched himself off the bench seat and whisked the gunbelt out of Jim's hands before he could protest. “That’s just fishing for compliments in return. I’m feeling inclined to indulge you this morning, so here they are.”

And he leaned close, his lips next to Jim's ear like they had been last night when they’d been pressed together, full length, on the couch, out of their minds with each other. Artie felt more than saw Jim's very tiny shudder. He didn’t know he could have that effect on Jim; he suddenly enjoyed the prospect of seeing it more in future.

“You are the most incredibly beautiful human being I’ve ever seen in my life,” he whispered into Jim's ear. “I know you know it. No one would dress that body the way you do, no one would use that body the way you do, if they didn’t know that it was absolutely spectacular. I can’t imagine a woman more beautiful than you because I’ve never seen a woman more beautiful than you. But if I did, I doubt I’d be inclined to take you up on that generous offer, Jim, because for me the best part of last night was also you. The best part of the last four years of my life has been you.”

Artie could just see the very, very slight flush on Jim's cheeks, high under the sun-bronzed tan. He couldn’t help his own smile.

And then from very few inches away Jim’s blue-diamond eyes looked into his. “That’s just looks, Artie.”

“Jim, trust me, there’s nothing _just_ about the way you look.”

“I mean...”

“I know what you mean.” Artie nodded. “You’re also the bravest, toughest, most loyal person I know, and on most days, you’re also pretty smart. Smart enough to stay partnered up with me.”

Jim smiled at that, the corners of his eyes crinkling.

Artie went on, “I just can’t imagine you turning down all the women who throw themselves at your head.”

“There are just as many women throwing themselves at your head,” Jim retorted smoothly.

“Not really --”

“Was it my imagination, Artie, or were some of those ladies from the brothel fighting over taking your arm on the way to the jail last night? I seem to recall one on each side, and a third one looking a little put out as she had to settle for walking behind you.”

Now that he mentioned it, Artie remembered that too. “Must have been temporary insanity, Jim, I don’t know why they’d give me two looks when you’re standing right there --”

“Because I look like this, Artemus. But you look... like fun.”

Artie’s grin just got wider and he shook his head. “I don’t know what to do with you today.”

“Maybe you’ll think of something later.” And Jim finally repossessed himself of his gun belt, snatching it from where it dangled from Artie’s hand, and headed for the door.

He moved so fast Artie barely had time to get out, “Jim!”

“What?” Jim paused with his hand on the door handle.

“Given our new arrangement, don’t you want to even... I don’t know...” Artie looked lost. “Give me a goodbye kiss?”

Jim just shook his head slowly, the amused sparkle never going out of his eyes. “No,” he said, just as slowly. “Because then I won’t leave.”

###

Artie spent the afternoon in the Wanderer, handling the communications necessary to get the marshals some reinforcements and, as quickly as possible, a transport to the state capital. Trying the mayor out of town seemed like the best possible idea.

Jim didn’t come back till the sun was nearly down again. “The jail’s quiet,” said Jim as he came in, swinging his gunbelt off and then ruffling the dust out of his own hair.

“Transport to the capital will be here tomorrow,” Artie told him, rolling down his shirtsleeves. “How’s your hearing?”

“Things are still faint,” said Jim with the slightest tinge of annoyance, “but it’s okay.”

“Same.”

“I want to make you a proposition, Artemus.”

At that Artie was all ears. He turned to look at Jim leaning his hip again against the table.

Jim said, “I’ve got us a suite at the hotel and unlimited hot bathwater.”

Artie just studied his face, trying to figure out what he wasn’t saying.

Jim's face was giving away no clues.

Well, Artie had put his cards on the table this morning. “I’ll bring the cognac.”

“I’ll bring the cigars,” said Jim, nodding decisively. “And Artie?”

“Yes?”

Artemus was just pulled up short, looking at Jim's enigmatic expression. It was something between a smug smile and a not-smile, and it reminded Artie strongly of a small painting called _La Gioconda_ that he had once seen in Paris, a painting of a woman with a very enigmatic expression that wavered between enjoying something past and enjoying something future.

Jim added, “Bring your violin.”

###

“Ah, Jim, this is the life.”

Both of them leaned back in steaming tubs. Rich blue tobacco smoke trailed from the end of the excellent cigars, and both had a tumbler of Artie’s best spirits close at hand.

Clean water dripped from the ends of Artie’s hair as he sat up a little straighter to take another sip.

“The steak was particularly good,” Jim mused, withdrawing the cigar from his mouth to watch the end burn down.

“We’re going to sleep like babies after this treatment,” said Artie, watching as one of the boys employed by the hotel scooped two buckets of water out of his tub, then poured two more in.

“That’s fine with me,” said Jim, sloshing backward a bit so that the water dripped over the edge.

“Is it?” said Artie, giving him a keen-eyed look over his own cigar.

“It is,” Jim said in tones of perfect certainty.

###

By the time they made it up to the room, dressed in clean linen from the skin out and feeling miles better about their lives, Artie was starting to wonder if Jim had been serious about this being his only plan for the evening.

Then Jim surprised him again.

“Play for me,” said Jim, settling himself into a horsehair chair in the parlour of their suite, the finest the little Western hotel had to offer, and putting his bare feet up on a cross-stitched footstool.

Artie still wasn’t sure if there were more pennies to drop, but he was inclined to indulge Jim in whatever he wanted tonight.

He settled his violin under his chin, playing one of the hay-dancing tunes that always made Jim's eyes dance too, earning himself a tiny smile as a reward, before settling into the things that he knew Jim liked best when they were on the road: the dreamy Brahms, primarily.

Then he played a few of the melodies he’d played for audiences before, some of them possibly new to Jim, some well known. He finished with “There is a Green Hill Far Away.”

As the last notes faded away from his trembling strings, he looked down to where his partner sat in the glow of the lamplight.

With his eyes closed, tumbler balanced on one thigh, head back, Jim West looked totally, utterly relaxed.

And when the last note died, Jim opened his eyes and looked into Artie’s.

And Artie just thought, _How did I not know._

Feeling like there was something of a lump in his throat, Artie heard himself saying thickly, “Time for sleep, Jim?”

“I’d love to, Artie.”

“Or just... or just time for bed?”

Jim's eyes never wavered. “I’d love to, Artie.”

Artie put his violin away. Jim had disappeared into the bedroom of the suite; he heard Jim making small movements around the room. 

When Artie followed Jim to the bedroom, he found Jim putting his gun near the bed.

Artie laid his violin case on the chest of drawers. Without looking at Jim, Artie asked quietly, “Shall I sleep in the other room?”

The silence went on until Artie felt like maybe a noise would snap the air like glass. He turned.

Jim was just looking at him. Already shaved, he had his shirt off, and he had his boots lined up near the bed. Then Jim turned away to pull the window closed and drew the curtains, shutting out the rest of the world and making this room very private.

He looked again over at Artie, standing by the closed violin case, and Jim said, “Whatever makes you happy, Artie.”

Pricklier, outside-world Jim liked to tease Artemus about the speed with which he moved; Artie realized perhaps it hadn’t all been the pot calling the kettle black. This Jim seemed utterly willing to let Artie set the pace, if indeed any pace was to be set.

If Artie wanted something to happen here, he would have to make it happen.

Decisively, Artie began unbuttoning his shirt. 

Slipping the buttons of his shirt front free, Artie untucked the snowy linen of his shirt, pulled it off his shoulders, laid it over the violin case. 

He walked over to where Jim was standing in the glow of the light. Or maybe that was just a trick of his eyes; Jim always did seem to glow.

Artie gave Jim one of his serious, level gazes. It made his eyes look large and dark. “I’m not sure what to do for you, I’m not even sure what I want. But I’m dead serious about loving you, Jim. I hope you know it.”

Jim nodded. In contrast to this afternoon’s confrontation in the Wanderer, he seemed utterly relaxed. Artie wondered what had changed, aside from some good food and drink and some hot baths.

“I do know it, Artie, and thank you.”

Like all Jim's thanks, to Artie’s ears this sounded simple, direct, and utterly sincere.

They stood looking at each other for what seemed like endless moments.

Finally Jim moved. He leaned to the side to place his whisky glass on the table next to the violin. “I meant what I said too, you don’t have to --”

Artie’s hand was on Jim’s shoulder in the next moment, curving up his neck, interrupting Jim as his fingers slid up to bury themselves in the thick hair on his scalp.

Closing his eyes in sheer pleasure, Jim made a sound low in his throat, an involuntary, _good_ sound. One that, despite the lingering effects of the silencing serum, both of them could hear.

The world narrowed for Artie and his doubts fell away. In this room, in his hands, he had Jim West, willing, _his_ , and he sank into that realization the way Jim came into his arms: wide awake to what it meant, and both chasing it and surrendering to it.

###

From being perhaps a little tentative, and very slow, the situation seemed to move in a blur after that.

Or maybe it was just that one sensation blurred into another till Jim honestly lost track of time.

Right after Artie’s fingers had scraped along his scalp, sending that electric little shiver down his spine, Jim had his arms around Artie, fitting their mouths together and kissing Artie as though that was all they were going to do for the rest of time.

It was strange only for a split second. Then it was just Artie’s mouth, moving under his, for once not talking, and Artie’s hands exploring his arms, his neck, his chest, his waist, just as any lover would. The smell of Artie was so familiar, right there underneath the scent of the rose soap that had come with the hot baths and the scent of the whisky and the tobacco smoke, that the taste of Artie’s mouth seemed equally familiar in just a few moments.

When Jim realized again where he was, he realized he had Artie backed up to the bed. He pushed back, just a little, letting Artie feel that the bed was there behind his knees, and Artie sat, almost obediently, just as so many women had.

Was this going to be just the same as all his other sexual experiences? Jim wondered. Maybe this was all there was. Maybe being in love didn’t make a difference. Maybe being with a _man_ didn’t even make a difference. Maybe Jim himself was only built one way and couldn’t be anything else, anything more.

Despite a tinge of disappointment, Jim didn’t really care. He couldn’t be disappointed in himself over this because he couldn’t be disappointed in Artie. He’d never been in love before, he was sure of it. That was new, and he was happy about it, grateful for it, no matter what happened right now.

Artie had his head turned down, and Jim sank his own hands into Artie’s curls. They always seemed to be crying out to be touched, he hadn’t been imagining that. Even if Artie changed his mind tomorrow, this was real, and this was something he knew he liked, and that his - that his partner would probably like too.

He felt Artie’s little moan as his fingertips traveled over his scalp.

Then before either of them could think too hard about last night, about the last time Jim had felt moans in Artie and succumbed to their allure, Artie’s voice sounded hoarse and a bit shocking in the silence.

Artie said, “I’m not a woman, Jim, I won’t break.”

Jim didn’t know if it was what Artie said or the way he said it that went straight to his core, but it made Jim rock-hard almost immediately. And looking down at Artie’s bared throat, Jim felt something in him _give_.

He nearly picked Artie up and shoved him back on the mattress, drawing a startled grunt from his partner. Stripping off his own trousers in record time, Jim climbed up on Artie’s lap, his thighs holding down one of Artie’s thighs and one knee perilously near Artie’s own hardness, and Jim reached over with his right hand and drew his short, slightly rough fingernails along the skin of Artie’s opposite shoulder and up his neck till he pushed Artie’s head almost entirely to the side. When he had that taut line of ligament, bone and muscle bared in front of him, Jim reached down, kissed it, and then without warning sank his teeth, hard but not too hard, into the spot where Artie’s neck met his shoulder.

He felt Artie jerk underneath him, felt as much as heard Artie grunt.

He reached down to check, sliding his palm over the rough fabric. Artie, still in his trousers, was now hard as a rock. The flesh at the heel of Jim's palm pressed into Artie there, feeling the hardness, and making Artie moan again.

And when he looked into Artie’s eyes, now just inches away, he could see those warm brown eyes, totally familiar but boring into him with an intensity that was new.

“Christ, Jim,” Artie rasped, bringing both arms up to close around Jim’s body and pull him close, twisting and pushing them both down on to the mattress.

Jim felt like laughing -- he did laugh -- oh, this wasn’t the same as anyone else, this was _Artie_ , and he was way more than anyone Jim had ever had in his bed before.

He was looking at Jim with the same expression he wore at the opera, or in front of a beautiful painting - an astonishment mixed with pleasure and appreciation, and Jim had never before been so glad of his own looks. If it made Artie look at him like that, he’d take it.

For himself, he let his hands go _everywhere_. Artie wasn’t shy, and he’d essentially given Jim free rein. Artie’s hands were exploring Jim's shoulders, his back, curving around the shape of his jawline, spreading over the muscles of Jim's chest. Jim took the opportunity to explore right back, realizing that he’d never let himself wonder too hard about his partner’s body because he’d never have thought in a million years that he would get to do this.

Artie didn’t look like a carved statue, and Jim was glad. Artie was real and so warm, hard where his muscles bunched under the skin of his arms when he pulled Jim backwards over him and laid down on the bed, soft just under the jut of his ribs where a trail of dark hair led downward to the trousers he was still wearing.

“Jim, you bastard, that tickles!” laughed Artie under his breath as Jim drew the square tips of his fingers up Artie’s sides, cupping his rib bones like the precious finds that they were.

Jim just grinned at him and filed that information away for later.

When he pressed Artie’s arms away and flat to the bed, he was fascinated by the strength there. It was exhilarating to control it. When he rubbed his face in the hair on Artie’s chest, it surprised him, Artie’s scent surrounding him and the texture somehow begging him for more. When he ran the flat of his tongue over Artie’s flat dark nipple, the noise Artie made, so deep, egged Jim on and he bit it, just a little, to see what Artie would do.

What Artie did was surge up off the bed, flipping Jim over in a move Jim had actually taught him, pinning Jim's hands to the bed beside his shoulders in a way that pushed Jim's chest up and towards him.

“Be careful what kind of a tone you set,” Artie half-murmured, half-growled as he returned the favor and gently bit one of Jim's dark nipples, nested in the thick hair on Jim's chest.

Jim just laughed again even as his hips surged up and toward Artie, his cock trying to find some pressure, some purchase. He trusted Artie with his life; he definitely trusted Artie’s lovemaking.

And this was making love. And Jim loved it.

“Thank you, Artie,” was all he could seem to say.

###

Artie had always seen flashes of a boyish, happy Jim in moments here and there. Now he had his arms full of nothing but that happy, relaxed version of Jim, and it Artie’s heart felt full and near to breaking before they had even gone further.

Jim was smiling, he was _laughing_ , and he touched every inch of Artie with an abandon that took Artie’s breath away. His hands wandered down over Artie’s back and tried to get inside the waistband of his trousers before they gave up and smoothed down over the curve of Artie’s hip, ignoring the fabric barrier between them. He heaved and twisted under Artie’s mouth and Artie could see, could feel his cock dripping between them, begging for release, but Jim looked ready to keep doing this all night. There was no urgency in his touches, his kisses, just a wanton thrill in having Artie all to himself.

If Artie had ever doubted his ability to make love to a man, it was gone like smoke now. Jim wasn’t just beautiful. He was _intoxicating_. The way he reacted to Artie’s touches made Artie feel as if his blood was bubbling inside his veins. He couldn’t have stopped now if a regiment of soldiers broke down the door and demanded he stop.

“Don’t thank me yet,” rasped Artie as he made a decision.

Levering his body along Jim's he pressed full down on to Jim's body, remembering just dimly how much he had liked this when Jim had done it to him. He felt Jim moan as they slotted against one another, and then heard Jim growl in his ear, “Get those trousers off or I’ll cut them off you.”

Artie just grinned, leaning back enough to roll off Jim and stand by the bed. He pushed them down without any hesitation, delighted again at the way Jim's eyes went to his cock and that Jim's expression didn’t change at all. No, he was wrong; Jim's expression looked, if anything, a little more determined. Artie knew what determined Jim looked like.

No further determination necessary, thought Artie as he lowered himself down against Jim's reclining, gorgeous, flushed body. You can have it.

Artie remembered what he’d said to Jim about not breaking and remembered that it went both ways. Jim wouldn’t break either. Jim liked physical action.

Artie pressed his hips against Jim's, slowly, sweetly, then he grabbed one of Jim's arms to flip them over again, and, lying under Jim in a position that they’d previously used only for wrestling holds, he wrapped one leg around one of Jim's, trapping it in place, and wrapped his arms around Jim's chest again, as he’d had him last night.

Jim's pupils were blown and his eyes were dark in the second Artie had to look at them before Jim ground down into him and took his mouth with a vehemence that was nothing short of plundering.

Artie reached up to grab Jim by the hair; nothing else seemed able to get his attention. He tugged back a little till Jim could look him in the eye again, wild animal eyes and all.

Artie rumbled, “If you want me the way you had that overly pushy woman last night, you can.”

Jim nodded once. His voice sounded hoarser and unused as he said back, “If you want _me_ the way I had that overly pushy woman last night, you can.”

That made Artie’s head snap back. “Really.”

“Really.”

“I didn’t think you’d want that.”

“The women who’ve asked me for it wanted it. It can’t be all bad.”

Artie couldn’t fault Jim's logic, but there felt like a piece missing to him. “But what do you want to do?”

Jim ground his hips against Artie’s again making them both groan, and reached up to grab Artie around the head by both hands, his forearms on Artie’s chest. It felt immobilizing, possessive, controlling. It was in absolute contrast to the sweetness of the kisses Jim rained on Artie’s eyes, his nose, along the line of his chin, and finally his lips, all the while their cocks grinding together in the most delicious way imaginable.

Finally apparently confident that he had Artie’s attention, Jim said quietly, “I want to do whatever you want me to do.”

That made Artie’s breath catch. He had to force himself to breathe deep; he felt a bit short of air. “You mean --”

“Just exactly what I said.” Of course, thought Artie’s brain as it raced along, Jim always meant what he _said_ , but -- Jim went on. “I really want to do whatever you want me to do.”

Christ, his Jim. _His Jim_. Of course he would need to be in control of every situation except this one. Of course, given his deep, quiet concern for others, he would be this kind of lover -- generous to a fault, giving, even selfless.

This could go around all night if Artie insisted on asking what Jim wanted. Artie realized that figuring _that_ out could take some time. Perhaps even Jim didn’t really know.

_His Jim._

It also required that Artie kick at least a few of his brain cells into gear. Jim was writhing against him, happy in this moment, and they were both going to come exactly like this in very few seconds unless someone made an effort.

And Artie really didn’t want this first night to play out like last night.

“All right,” Artie managed to get out, “but we’re doing this together.”

Jim just nodded, then grinned before he leaned forward and captured Artie’s earlobe between his teeth.

 _Great chariots of fire_. Artie had never been inclined to swear in bed before but Jim was going to change him.

Artie felt himself throb. “Jim, I want you to ... would you be willing to take me in your mouth? Just for a second?”

Unhesitatingly Jim slid down Artie’s body, his cock leaving a trail of dampness against Artie’s thigh, kissing his way down Artie’s chest and the softer curves of his stomach before settling between his thighs.

He looked unutterably beautiful there, his arms balanced against Artie’s thighs, muscles bunched along his broad shoulders as he held himself there, as his hands curved around the base of Artie’s desperately turgid cock, nosing along the tight swell of Artie’s balls and -- was he inhaling Artie’s scent? -- burying his face into the crook where Artie’s hip joint formed a dip, rubbing his face up and down like he had against Artie’s chest.

Artie couldn’t tell if Jim was marking him, or just soaking in the smell and the feel of Artie’s body. Maybe both.

He took Artie’s cock in one hand and cradled his balls in the other before sliding his lips over Artie’s tip.

Artie definitely wanted to start swearing out loud.

Jim must have liked something about the noises Artie made because he looked up and smiled, even with his mouth around Artie as it was, and Artie almost spent right then.

But then Jim returned his attention to Artie’s cock and this time, he didn’t just swirl his lips and tongue over the tip, he took the entire thing inside his incredibly hot, soft mouth, and pressed it against the roof of his mouth with his tongue against the underside.

Artie let out a moan that would be sure to bring someone to find out if he was dying. Desperate to keep this more quiet, he put his fist in his mouth.

Of course Jim noticed. He pulled his mouth off of Artie to say, “That door is locked, and I gave a five-dollar gold piece to the desk clerk. No one’s going to bother us.”

Artie just shook his head disbelievingly. Even if no one came to investigate the noise, Jim was going to kill him. “You’ve done this before,” he gasped out.

“No,” said Jim, “but... past knowledge has to be good for something.”

Artie just had time to realize that he was owing this ecstasy right now to some very, very clever woman in Jim's past, before he couldn’t think any more because Jim was doing it again. And again.

His mouth was deeper and wider than any woman’s, and Artie wasn’t small; it was luxury, pure luxury to fit entirely inside the muscular, soft surfaces of Jim's mouth and throat, and it was an additional prize on top that Jim seemed to have a knack for moving that talented tongue around, swirling against the shaft, pressing on the tip, and smoothing over and over the ridge just below the head that was the most sensitive spot and would have made Artie thrash except that Jim was holding him down with his own body against Artie’s thighs.

It was unimaginably good and Artie felt himself clenching from his head right down to his toes; not just clenching but trying to drive himself deeper, unable to control his muscles as Jim seemed to draw his very soul out through his cock and into Jim's eager and wanting mouth.

“Jim, I’m gonna,” Artie rasped, one hand reaching for the man making love to him right now.

Jim grabbed the hand, kept his other hand cradling Artie’s balls -- he must feel how close Artie was, Artie thought frantically, he knew how this worked.

He showed no signs of stopping, though.

Something told Artie that a little restraint -- just a tiny bit -- might well be called for this first time. “Next time,” he told Jim, knowing that his competitive partner was probably determined to swallow as if that would get him legal conviction of a criminal.

Jim looked up at Artie, pulling his head up and off, and held the look, eye to eye, as he brought his hand back to squeeze Artie’s cock, now soaked with Jim’s spit, and rub his thumb, hard, right under the tip.

Artie groaned a deep, belly-up groan as he felt the orgasm hit him, at the base of the spine, behind his balls, deep in his belly, and surge up his body as if he were about to drown in a hot ocean of pleasure.

He knew he was clenching himself forward, thighs pressing up under Jim’s arms, hands pulling up the sheets till they might tear, but he knew Jim wouldn’t care, Jim had him, Jim _loved him_.

He might have blacked out for a second -- he certainly seemed to have forgotten to breathe. When Artie knew where he was again, he realized he was covered in his own ejaculate, Jim’s hand still stroking slowly up and down his softening cock and the other still cradling his balls.

Which were now, he realized, a little sore, he had come so hard.

He had a fleeting thought that he should just tell Jim “You win.” But he didn’t want to make light of this. Tonight was important. He knew that, they both felt that.

But he’d just spent himself practically into unconsciousness and he couldn’t lift his arms. In a very real sense, Jim had won.

###

When Artie had breath enough to move again, and weakly pushed Jim's still-moving hand away, Jim finally stopped.

Something growly and hollow in his chest was quiet. Jim hadn’t known till last night that he wanted this, not really. It was something that had flitted around in the back of his mind like a frightened deer, and Jim had never looked too closely at it, because what good would come of that? Even when he’d known how he felt about Artie, this possibility had seemed too distant.

But last night he’d known with a bone-deep certainty that he wanted this, exactly this, and only the possibility that Artie might not want it too gave him the least bit of disquiet.

Now with Artie spread out on this bed -- for the night, their bed -- bone-shatteringly exhausted by a _petit mort_ that Jim had given him, something inside Jim felt slotted into the the right place.

He half-stepped out of the bed, keeping one leg on the mattress, and made a long arm to snag the hand towel on the washstand. He used it to clean Artie up, wondering if he should remind Artie that, with all the tips he’d thrown around this place, they could certainly even have another bath in the morning if they wanted to.

Artie didn’t look like he was thinking about much.

With his face flushed and his lips flushed even darker, a slight sheen of sweat standing out below his hairline, and his normally tamed curls tossed every which way by Jim's hands, Artie was breathing deep, even breaths. He pointed a shaking hand at Jim.

“If you’re trying to kill me... fine.”

Jim laughed again, leaning over Artie, thinking vaguely about kissing him again, when Artie hauled him up against his body, so that their chests and bellies met before Artie pushed back to make some space between them. Artie’s clever, nimble hand grabbed hold of Jim where he’d almost forgotten he was still weeping with excitement and hard as a rock.

“I can --”

Artie made as if to slide down, perhaps to give Jim the same treatment he’d just received.

Jim just tightened his arm around Artie’s neck. He’d made love to taller women, but Artie’s body was broader and stronger than any woman he’d held; it felt very odd to feel a little smaller than his partner. He wanted to stay here in Artie’s arms, he wanted Artie to stay here where he could see his face.

Jim said, “I want to see you.”

Artie stopped. Something passed over his face, a flash of the same determination Jim usually saw when Artie was about to do something dangerous. Jim wondered what that was about.

What Artie said was, “Good. We can do that.”

Jim still felt ridiculously relaxed, maybe more relaxed than he could ever remember being in his adult life, as he settled down on his elbow, staying where he could see Artie’s face, where he could feel Artie’s breath, where he could kiss Artie as much as he wanted to.

There was some sort of disconnect between his brain and the rest of him, Jim realized as Artie’s hand began to move up and down his length and the hot wash of pleasure surged up his body from his feet to his head. _That_ part of him wasn’t relaxed, not at all.

He looked into Artie’s eyes and couldn’t remember ever being this close to another human being.

Jim shivered and leaned over to kiss Artie more. It was an embarrassment of riches, being able to kiss Artie as much as he wanted.

When Artie twisted his hand a little, squeezing Jim's tip, Jim groaned into his mouth.

At that, Artie smiled, the kind of open sweet smile Jim most loved to see on him, and Jim couldn’t take much more. He threw his head back, wanting to keep looking at Artie but unable to keep still, and his hips thrust forward into Artie’s fist of their own accord, the path slicked by the evidence of his own desperation that was still dripping from the tip of his cock.

And Artie started whispering the most insane... endearments, Jim decided they must be, things no one else had ever said to him in the dark in the nighttime, or even during the day. Things Jim didn’t think anyone ever _would_ say.

Things about how Jim was gorgeous like this, and that Artie loved watching him get closer and closer this way, and that Jim meant the world to him, and that he hoped Jim would trust him enough to spend the way he had, in Artie’s arms, right here.

An orgasm for Jim had never been a matter of trust before.

He put his life in Artie’s hands every day. This all seemed like a natural extension of that, and he trusted Artie, he did.

When Artie pulled him closer and bit down on the curve of muscle of Jim's chest, tongue tangling in Jim's chest hair, and squeezed Jim hard, Jim felt his own stomach muscles curling as his body attempted to circle in on itself, finding itself stopped only by the solid reality of Artie. The orgasm hit Jim like lightning from all the extremities of his body, and he moaned low and long, feeling each pulse burst out of him into Artie’s talented hand, some in time with the endearments Artie was whispering into his ear.

“I’ve got you, Jim,” was what he remembered most later, coming down from a tremendously high place, coming down to the grounding feeling of Artie’s arms and Artie’s voice. “I’ve got you.”

And he did.

Jim had a vague sensation of Artie’s hand using the same towel to wipe off some of the sticky evidence of his pleasure that had gathered in the hair on Jim's belly.

Jim fell asleep.

###

When Jim's breathing had evened out, indicating that he’d fallen asleep, Artie took the liberty of doing the same.

When he woke he had no idea how many hours it was later; outside it still appeared to be dark. The lamp had guttered out. Artie mused on the practical aspects of the love life of two men. No one was going to blame anyone else for falling asleep immediately afterwards, it seemed. In fact, so far, it seemed to be only positive aspects.

He looked at the very dim shape of the ruffled edge of the curtain hanging against the window, and realized that he was hot not only because the window was closed -- a good precaution against any sounds traveling from here out into the street last night, he couldn’t disagree with that -- but also because Jim had plastered himself along Artie’s back and thrown an arm over Artie’s waist. The man was breathing into the spot between Artie’s shoulderblades.

It beggared the imagination. Jim West was a _snuggler_.

Artie closed his eyes again, enjoying the peace in his soul and, by extension, the peace in Jim's.

He’d come to his own decisions about right and wrong a very long time ago, and he knew he tended to flex them at any given moment, when the situation called for it. But Artie couldn’t imagine anything that would make him feel guilty or bad about making love to Jim. If he tried real hard, he might imagine the possibility of wishing they’d done it sooner. That was all.

There was a creak in the hallway, maybe of a settling wooden beam, maybe of a step on the stair. Artie tensed, listening.

Other people, he knew, wouldn’t see it that way. Not the people they were out here to fight; probably not even the people they were out here to protect. The President had a tremendous soft spot for Jim West, but even he would not want to see any direct evidence that West was sharing an intimate bed with his male partner.

Artie lay for a while in the dark, wondering if it were his responsibility to take care of Jim’s career by insisting they not make a habit of this.

But he couldn’t get too far with that line of reasoning, stuck wondering how, now that he knew what it was like to make love to Jim West, how he would ever do without it.

Artie was lost in remembrances of last night, the feel of Jim’s skin against his and that honest, happy smile, when Jim’s arm tightened around his waist.

“You going back to sleep?” Jim's sleep-roughened voice said into his back.

“How you can sleep at a time like this...” Artie tried to joke but it came out flat. He sighed. “This is dangerous, Jim.”

“That’s what you’ve been lying here thinking about?”

Artie shifted in his arms to look Jim in the eye. “How long have you been awake?”

“Since you heard that creak in the hallway and tensed up.”

Artie just shook his head. “I’ve got to pay more attention to you.”

Jim gave him one of those sweet, happy grins again, and Artie knew he was lost anyway.

Jim said, “That’s fine with me.” He rolled on to his back, and rolled Artie towards him, pulling him into his arms again and resting Artie’s head on his shoulder as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

In low tones pitched only to reach Artie’s ear he said, “It’s been dangerous for a long time, Artie. I don’t think our making love is going to change anything.”

“What do you mean, it’s been dangerous for a long time?”

Jim just sighed. “Artemus.”

When Artie just kept looking at him, Jim licked his lips -- almost as if he were still trying to put off what he had to say.

Artie kept quiet.

Jim said, “Loveless knew. Emmet Stark knew.” His arm tightened around Artie’s shoulders. “Vautrain knew.”

“Yeah, but...” Artie trailed off, digesting what Jim had said. Their enemies hadn’t just played them off one another. Their enemies had known, before they did, that the two men loved each other.

“Wait a minute...” Artie frowned at Jim. “How did you... Did you figure out that we were in love... because _they_ did?”

Jim pulled him closer again, kissed the edge of his hair. “Stands to reason.”

“That’s...” Somehow Artie found it repulsive, more repulsive than what they’d gone through to close the case in this town. 

“How many times do you think our enemies can tell me that the ultimate torture for me is to watch you die, before I realize that it’s true?”

“I know, but...”

“And don’t even think that it’s an out to say that we can protect ourselves by pretending that you don’t love me too. You know we can’t.”

Artie hadn’t been going to say it. Emmet Stark had already kicked that bucket over, telling them that it was just as good a torture to watch Artie kill Jim accidentally, as it would have been the other way around.

“C’mon, Jim. They know we care about each other. They can’t know that we... feel this way. And if we give them proof...”

“We don’t give them anything, Artie. We never have.”

 _That_ was true enough. Artie realized Jim was right; he was just going to have to struggle through it for a while. Clearly Jim had had more time to think about this than Artie had.

“It still feels risky. Like carrying around a stick of dynamite in my pocket.”

“It is risky.” Now Jim was nuzzling Artie’s temple, apparently enjoying the feel of both Artie’s skin and Artie’s curls against his lips. Perhaps Artie should have expected it, but it was still a shock to find that this version of Jim, the private version, was so uninhibited, and so borderless.

“Could we go back?”

“Could you?” Jim shot back immediately.

Artie couldn’t lie. “No.”

He thought about it for a few more seconds.

“Should we not have come this far?”

Jim settled back into the pillows, bringing Artie with him. 

“I don’t worry too much about should-have-beens, Artie.”

###

The U.S. Marshal in charge of transporting the mayor was an upright fellow, fit but graying at the temples, with calluses on his hands from riding reins when he shook Artie’s hand.

“We’ll handle everything from here, don’t worry about it.”

Artie sat up a little taller. Jim was crowding into his back as he sat on the barstool. It had never bothered Artie any, and today it was downright welcome. “We know you have it under control.”

“I take it as a personal affront that we needed the Secret Service to find out about this, and deal with it. This isn’t the America we’re trying to build in my territory.”

Artie sympathized with the fellow. “I understand, Marshal, but I’m sorry to say that we haven’t found that corruption has a territory.”

Jim nodded. “Our job was to stop the robberies; uncovering the conspiracy in this town was just a side-effect. You know same as we do that our work makes those kinds of ripples.”

The Marshal rubbed his cheek. He hadn’t shaved in two days and the stubble coming in was a little gray too. He didn’t look aged, though; just worn. “I don’t think this fellow Ellis is the rock where the ripples started.”

Artie nodded. “We know. Where did he get that silencing serum? Do you know?”

The Marshal shook his head. “We get little scraps here and there, an odd story, an odd crime. You need people to testify to what happened to get the law on it, and too many times, they won’t.”

Jim's eyes were piercing. “Then you do have some idea of who’s behind it.” 

“We just have a couple of leads, nothing solid, nothing leading to anything. We call him the Player because it feels to us like he’s just playing games with us. We shut down a cattle rustling operation or a smuggling ring, and it pops up again in a new area with the same weird features to the story. Like this silencing serum stuff.”

“Keep us informed, Marshal, if we can we’re happy to help.” Jim stepped around Artie as if to make ready to go, causing Artie to slide off his stool. The marshal shook hands with Jim too, and nodded.

On the way out, they noticed in the corner of the saloon, a woman’s glossy golden-brown curls winking in the daylight that had managed to shine through the dusty windows.

As one, the two men advanced on the table in the shadows in the corner where she was sitting.

Artie held up a hand as Mauricier made as if to stand. “Stay in your seat, you big ox, no one’s coming over to rattle your chain.”

“Leaving town, gentlemen?” Patricia McKenzie gave them both a glittering smile and Artie didn’t care at all if she meant it or not.

“Yes.” Jim just had his gaze fixed on her, his poker face, and Artie wondered what his partner was up to.

“I hope you visit again,” the madam shot back, still smiling, her chin resting on her fist.

“We won’t,” Jim said just as shortly, then leaned down to put his lips very close to her ear.

Artie felt something odd flip over in his gut but he figured Jim knew what he was doing. When Mauricier started to reach over the table toward Jim, Artie just put a hand over the table and grabbed the giant’s wrist.

His fingers didn’t even meet around the meaty joint of the giant’s wrist, but it got his attention, and again Artie looked him in the eye. “We said we’re going,” he said softly, and somehow it came out as far more threatening than it was mollifying.

Jim stood and walked out. Artie went after him, noting as he went that the color had drained from Patricia McKenzie’s face.

In the street, Artie couldn’t resist asking Jim under his breath, “What the hell did you say to her?”

“I told her if she ever forced you again to give her even so much as a cup of coffee, I’d kill her.”

Artie felt his heart swell again. It was going to be a frequent reaction in future, he could just tell. “Unnecessary, James old fellow, but thank you. I’m touched at your show of consideration for my virtue.”

Jim just cut him a look, the look Artie knew was in place of rolling his eyes at Artie’s lame attempt at humor, and Artie knew that Jim took it the way Artie meant it. Artie didn’t intend to take that woman seriously a moment longer than he had to, and Jim shouldn’t either; but Artie did appreciate Jim's concern.

“What should I do to convince you that I have the same consideration for you?” Artie asked, still quietly enough that no one else could hear.

Jim shook his head, the tiny smile with the eye-crinkles the only evidence of his feelings. “Just stick with me, partner.”

“To the ends of the earth,” said Artie with a theatrical flourish, leading the way to where their horses were tethered. But they both knew he meant it.

  


_CODA_

It was weeks and weeks before the two Secret Service agents found themselves out in the wilderness, heads balanced on saddle bags, watching the fire burn down while the horses whickered gently nearby, and no one around for miles and miles.

It was quiet, and they were alone, and it felt like there were only the two of them in the world.

Artie said, “I’d love to know why you told me.”

Jim stared into the fire, watching it pop and crackle.

Artie’s eyes kept straying from the fire to Jim, as though he didn’t want to be caught looking straight at his partner.

Artie said, “You took a hell of a risk.”

Jim shook his head no. “No risk at all.”

“No?” Artie furrowed his brow in confusion.

Jim was silent for long, long minutes more.

But finally Jim said, “If you did feel that there was more to this relationship, and she asked that question, and I didn’t say anything, I’d be leaving you twisting in the wind. And I didn’t want to do that. If you didn’t feel like there was anything more to this relationship, and I didn’t bring it up, you’d already know something was going on but that I wanted to hide it, and eventually that would be a problem between us one way or another. If I wanted to keep you as a partner I thought I’d better own up. And I do want to keep you as a partner.”

“Yes, but... what if I’d reacted badly? Turned you in to the Service? Treated you like someone different because of how you felt?”

“You’d never do that to me, Artie.”

They both knew that was true.

Artie sounded a little choked up as he said, “Thanks for trusting me, Jim.”

Jim just nodded, pushing his hat down over his eyes. “That goes both ways.”

They watched the fire eat through thick tree branch, turning it into orange embers, before Jim said, “Artie...”

Artie just waited. It must be a hell of a question if Jim was this unsure about asking it.

When the end of the sentence never came, Artie reached over and laid his hand on Jim's shoulder.

The grasp of Artie’s hand seemed to steady Jim, and he went ahead and asked. 

“How come you didn’t know?”

Whatever Artie might have been expecting, that wasn’t it. But he realized as soon as Jim asked the question, he should have known it was coming. Because he was getting to know Jim a little better, now, in ways he never had before. Someday Jim would tell him more about his parents, and his previous loves, and his past, and Artie would be able to piece together how Jim thought of himself. But already he knew enough to know that this would have been something that had been eating at Jim from the moment Artie had said that he _didn’t_ know.

So he thought long and hard before he answered. Because for Jim, he knew, asking that question was the real risk.

Artie said, “Jim, would you mind terribly if I moved a little closer?”

“Not at all.”

Artie _was_ getting to know Jim better, so he listened for, and noticed, how the words had a sort of deep purring warmth that told him more than Jim had actually said.

He stood up and brought his saddlebag with him, laying it and his body own next to Jim on the ground, on Jim's blanket. It would be cold out here, sleeping like this, but they’d done it a hundred times before, and right now Jim would be warm both from the fire and from Artie, and Artie wanted him to be.

When he had himself arranged so that his body was pressing into Jim's all along his length, arms awkwardly mixing, till, even fully clothed, Jim could feel Artie’s solid presence, Artie spoke softly.

“We’d been each other’s everything for a long time. I’ve never been in a situation like this before but I think I knew without even admitting to myself that it was... Jim, you know that there are chemical compounds that can be explosive that are also unstable.”

“Certainly.” Jim nodded. “Nitroglycerin.”

“So imagine a compound that is both highly stable and extraordinarily explosive.”

“All right,” said Jim in a tone that indicated that he was being patient but wished Artie would get on with it.

Artie smiled into the dark.

He went on. “You’d die for me, and I’d do the same. I knew we both knew it. And I knew that if either one of us _did_ die, it would be the worst possible thing that could happen for the other one. That’s explosive, Jim. It could be dangerous on a mission. But it’s also the thing likeliest to keep us safe. We both know the other one will never rest if it’s possible to save us. Keeps the heart rate down when the bad people are trying to kill us, don’t you find?”

“Artie.”

Jim’s threatening tone made Artie smile again. But he took pity on the man and tried to wrap up his explanation. “We were already explosive but stable, Jim. I think I knew that if I even thought about seeing you differently, much less actually touching you, we might become _un_ stable. So close around each other all the time... if I even thought about pushing anything too far, anything at all, some part of me worried about what could explode.”

Jim seemed to think about this for a while.

“That would make sense if you had already found me... let’s say, attractive, but then decided not to act on that.”

“Well, yes and no. I already knew you were attractive in the same way I know that the sun is going to come up in the morning. There’s no _arguing_ about it, Jim. Show me someone who’s willing to go out on a limb and claim that you’re _un_ attractive.”

There was silence for a long while.

Artie said, “You’re not entirely satisfied with my explanation.”

“No I’m not, Artie, but I’ll admit I’m not interested in a longer explanation about unstable chemical compounds, either.”

“Fair enough.” Artie pulled his own blanket over both of them. They’d be plenty warm if they stayed together like this.

Underneath the blanket Jim rolled on his side toward Artie, looking at his partner’s profile. Artie turned his head toward Jim.

Jim said, “I counted from the first on the fact that people underestimate you. They’re looking right at you and they don’t realize what they see.”

Artie pulled his chin down, looked thoughtful. “Maybe I was too busy being everybody I needed to be for the cases and lost track of myself a little.”

“Hmm.” Jim wasn’t looking at Artie’s face, but his eyes were fixed on Artie’s shoulder. After a little while Jim said, “I wasn’t blaming you, I was just explaining. If anyone really looked at you, and saw you, just you, I knew they’d be... well, dazzled.”

Artie’s face made the most amazing expression, a combination of surprise, pleasure, and questioning. “Dazzled, Jim?”

“I’m trying to tell you. That’s... that’s part of how I knew.”

Artie lay there next to Jim for a while, still half-smiling, before he said, “Yeah, that’s what I mean too.”

There was quiet for so long Artie thought perhaps Jim had fallen asleep.

Finally Jim's voice came out of the dark, the smell of the burning fire floating over them. “It wouldn’t have mattered if we never laid a finger on each other.”

“No.”

“But I’m glad we did.”

“Me too.”

The thickest part of the branch crackled, then collapsed, sending sparks up into the dark. The horses whuffed quietly, and in the distance a coyote howled, then was silent.

Artie said, “Go to sleep and we’ll pick this topic up again in the morning.”

Jim nodded and settled in, figuring they’d both wake up with the dawn.

  



End file.
